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BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 



BY 
MARION FLORENCE LANSING, M.A. 



ILLUSTRATED 

BY REPRODUCTIONS OF DRAWINGS 

FROM OLD ENGRAVINGS 



GINN AND COMPANY 

BOSTON • NEW YORK • CHICAGO • LONDON 



^ 



N\* 



COPYRIGHT, 1911, BY MARION FLORENCE LANSING 



ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
9i i-3 









GINN AND COMPANY- PRO- 
PRIETORS • BOSTON • U.S.A. 



©CI.A289117 



PREFACE 

MEDIAEVAL BUILDERS OF THE MODERN 
WORLD 

History has no period which makes a more vivid appeal 
to the young reader than the thousand years which we call 
the Middle Ages. The mediaeval world is just such a world 
as he would like to live in, where knights ride off on cru- 
sades, and kings wander out from their palaces in disguise, 
where heroes sail away to explore unknown seas, and gay 
cavaliers sally forth to tournament and joust. It requires 
no effort to interest boys and girls in this part of history. 
They turn to it with the enthusiasm with which they seize 
fairy tales and legends of chivalry and romance, and find in 
its reality a satisfying response to the desire for a true story. 

The child's interest being assured, the problem is to 
make this interest of use in the process of his education. 
The purpose of this series is to relate this fascinating and 
heroic past to the present by telling the stories from the 
point of view of the contribution of the Middle Ages to 
the world of to-day. The heroes gain a new importance 
and the stories a new meaning by this treatment. Who 
the " mediaeval builders " were may be seen by the titles 
of the following books which make up the series : " Bar- 
barian and Noble," " Patriots and Tyrants," " Sea Kings 
and Explorers," " Kings and Common Folk," " Cavalier 
and Courtier," " Craftsman and Artist." 



vi PREFACE 

BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 

In this volume are grouped stories of that early period 
of the Middle Ages when Europe was the meeting place 
of many races and tribes which were later to make up the 
nations of the modern world. In its broad lines the his- 
torical epic of the wandering of the nations, and of the 
formation of Christendom out of a chaos of tribes and 
peoples and tongues, is as stirring as any saga ; in its 
details there are many bits of epic prose, many quaint 
scenes from the life of the time, and many pictures of 
well-known heroes. It is, moreover, with all its tragedy 
of the fall of the Roman Empire, a tale of hope ; for 
there runs through it a single line of progress, — that the 
barbarian of one age appears as the noble of the next, 
taking his turn in defending his world against the onrush 
of new barbarians. Barbarian becoming noble uncon- 
sciously, uncivilized becoming civilized, that is the tale of 
the early Middle Ages in relation to the world of to-day ; 
and it is a tale fascinating beyond one's most hopeful 
anticipations. 

From this material Kingsley and Scott, Dickens and 

Miss Yonge and Freeman drew what suited their purpose 

as writers of England's story ; but the history of the early 

Middle Ages in its relation to the progress of civilization 

has never been adequately told for younger readers. The 

table of contents will indicate the story interest of the 

tales ; the deeper purpose of the book has been carefully 

traced out in the notes. 

M. F. L. 
Cambridge, Massachusetts 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Barbarian and Noble i 

The Story of Drusus ,3 

A Roman and a Barbarian 10 

The Coming of the Witch People 18 

Alaric the Goth 27 

Attila the Scourge of God 40 

Theodoric 57 

Goth against Goth 64 

Clovis, King of the Franks 80 

Roderick and the Saracens 92 

Charlemagne 102 

The School of the Palace 109 

Vikings from the North 115 

Alfred and the Danes 123 

Rollo the Viking 137 

Saint Winfred 151 

Richard the Crusader 159 

NOTES 169 



BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 

NOBLES and barbarians, civilized nations and 
uncivilized tribes, conquered and unconquered, 
— so the world was divided in the golden age of the 
Roman Empire, when the city on the seven hills 
ruled the world, when it was the proudest boast a 
man could make to say, "I am a Roman citizen," 
and he who could claim that right looked on the 
subject peoples of the north and west and south 
and east and called them barbarians, while under 
his breath he termed them slaves. 

Thus it was in the days of the great Caesars, and 
it was a wise order of things for a time, for so the 
whole known world was drawn together into a huge 
framework of law and civilization ; so it came about 
that the great waters were guarded by Roman trans- 
ports, and merchants might journey over them in 
safety, and commerce prospered ; and so it was that 
great highways were built across the continent of 
Europe, until the saying was that "all roads led to 
Rome." 

But there was one region where Roman roads did 
not penetrate, and where, though legions of trained 



2 BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 

soldiers marched and countermarched, they did not 
stay nor hold a lasting place. Down through the 
map of Europe run two rivers, in the north the 
Rhine and in the south the Danube, forming a 
natural boundary which separates the great forests of 
Germany and Austria and Hungary from the west- 
ern plains and peninsulas ; and this boundary stood 
as the frontier, the limit of the Roman Empire. 

It had not been the wish of the great mistress of 
the nations that she should stop here ; it was the 
dream of Roman emperors that she should rule the 
world from the rising of the sun to its setting ; but 
here she had been forced to pause, and the reason 
why she stopped her imperial progress is told in 
the first story of the conflict between barbarian 
and noble. 



THE STORY OF DRUSUS 

WAS it the army of some mighty rival power 
that stopped the lines of Roman soldiery 
when they came to the banks of the river Rhine ? 
Or did the people who met them there have better 
swords or mightier engines of war than these veteran 
warriors, — these world conquerors ? No, that was 
the strange part of it. It was a simple forest people 
who held those lands west of the river boundary, — 
a people who dwelt in scattered vi\lages and lived 
by the hunt and the chase. Men of a later day, 
looking back on them as they stand out in contrast 
to their foes, have called them forest children, for, 
though they were tall and strong, men in stature 
and in years, yet they were children at heart, and 
they met their all-powerful enemy with the simplicity 
and courage of children. 

The Romans could not understand their Gothic 
opponents, who were for that very cause the more 
terrible to them. It was impossible for the crafty 
Roman to comprehend a chieftain who could cut 
down a dozen men in battle with merciless cruelty, 
but who would ride beforehand unarmed into the 

3 



4 BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 

enemy's camp to appoint the place and hour for the 
battle, in order that neither side might gain an undue 
advantage. The mystery of an alien people was more 
terrifying than a forest of swords. 

The Romans did not give up easily. Many a gen- 
eral volunteered for the perilous northern service, 
and of all those who fought the barbarians none 
was braver than the mighty Drusus. It was he who 
was the first Roman captain to sail the dread North 
Ocean ; and it was he who cast up on the farther 
side of the Rhine those deep and well-paved trenches 
which for centuries were called by his name. Many 
a time he had put the barbarian to the sword, and 
when he had driven him far into the inmost recesses 
of the forest, had not given over chasing and pur- 
suing. It was surely meet that Drusus be the one to 
enter the Gothic lands and subdue the Gothic peoples, 
who, though they came out and made treaties with 
the Romans and even served for pay in their armies, 
looking with admiring eyes on their great cities with 
high walls and towers, yet slipped away into their 
forest shelters and beat back their former masters 
with sharp-pointed arrows, shot from behind rough 
breastworks of trees. 

In the reign of the emperor Augustus, greatest 
of all the Caesars, Drusus brought his men across 



THE MARCH INTO THE FOREST 5 

the Rhine on flat-bottomed boats, and plunged with 
them into the forest. It was a hard and toilsome 
march, for the way led through dense forests and 
trackless swamps, where many men were lost. When 
the Romans met a company of Goths drawn up be- 
fore their village in battle line, they were more often 
than not able to gain the victory and drive them back 
in disorder ; but the Goths would disappear into the 
woods, and the next day, as the army was struggling 
along, trees, half felled the day before, would begin 
to fall at the touch of unseen hands, until a network 
of logs was formed which would halt the march for 
many a weary hour until the Romans could go round 
it or slowly clear it away. By night strange sounds, 
more terrifying even than the howling of the wild 
beasts which must be kept ever at bay, disturbed 
their slumbers. Now there would be calls and cries 
from one side, and then a response would come from 
far away, until the superstitious declared that the 
forest was bewitched. Yet the brave Drusus pressed 
on undaunted, and the army plodded along behind 
him, until they came to the river Elbe, the river in 
the center of Germany. They had gone many, many 
miles beyond the farthest point which other armies 
had reached, and it really seemed as if this barbarian 
land, never before trodden by Roman feet, was to 



6 BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 

be forced to yield its secrets to the mighty Drusus 
and come under imperial sway. 

Then a strange thing befell. Perhaps the Romans 
had gone too near the sacred grove that lay in the 
midst of the region where Odin, the great god of 
the Teutons, was born. There none might enter 
save with a chain around his neck to show his sub- 
jection, and if a man fell there he might not raise 
himself again, but must crawl out backward on hands 
and knees. In any case the Romans had gone too 
far. Again and again they had been warned, but 
they had not heeded the sounds by night nor the 
spells that had been cast upon them by day. Their 
hearts had been too full of Roman pride, and their 
ears too dull of hearing. Then the mystery of the 
north, the dread, beautiful spirit of Germania, took 
on human form, that she might be seen by even their 
mortal eyes, for her land was in danger and she 
must needs warn back these rude invaders. All at 
once, in the path over which Drusus led his army, 
there stood, it is said, a wondrous woman, taller than 
mankind and of more than mortal beauty. Her ap- 
pearance was in the likeness of a barbarian woman, 
with eyes as blue as the sky and flaxen hair that 
streamed behind her as a cloud. While the soldiers 
shrank back in terror before this vision, she spoke. 




GERMANIA REPELLING DRUSUS 



8 BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 

Slowly and in his own tongue she addressed the 
general, and, though the music of the forest was in 
her voice, yet the Roman shivered as though a cold 
wind had struck him. 

" Whither art thou hastening, insatiable Drusus ? 
Back, I command thee ! It is not fated that thou 
shalt see all this region. Depart ! For thee the end 
of labor and of life is already at hand." 

Then the invaders knew that the very gods of 
these heathen peoples were against them, and they 
turned and went back all the long way to the river 
Rhine ; but in the midst of their fright they remem- 
bered that they were Romans, and on the farthest 
point which they had reached they set up in the 
Roman fashion a trophy, a monument of stone, by 
which generations still unborn should know that in 
this the ninth year before the Christian era Romans 
penetrated thus far into the land of the Goths. Be- 
cause of the misfortune of the expedition, men of a 
later day called the monument Scelerata, which is to 
say Accursed ; for the prophecy of Germania was 
fulfilled, and, as the brave Drusus was returning in 
haste, ere ever he reached the Rhine or set foot on 
Roman soil he fell from his horse and died. 

So the Romans were turned back, and all Rome 
mourned for the brave Drusus, who had given his 



THE RIVER BOUNDARY 9 

life for the Empire. But it was not in the Roman 
blood to accept defeat, and though the soldiers told 
their tale of the wondrous vision that had turned 
them back, men scoffed at them. Before the rule of 
the great Augustus was over, another Roman general 
crossed the forbidden line and marched into the land 
of the Goths. His was a worse fate than that of 
Drusus, for, while Drusus lost his life, he sent his 
army safely back to the emperor, while Varus lost 
two whole legions, the flower of Roman soldiery, in 
a terrible battle in the swamps. Not for many, many 
years had Roman arms suffered so great a disaster. 
When the news came to Rome, the whole city went 
into mourning. For a month the emperor did not 
cut his beard nor care for his locks, but let them 
grow in sign of his grief, and often in his sleep or 
in his waking hours his courtiers heard him cry, 
" O Varus, give me back my legions." 

Then the words of Germania were heeded, and 
the wise emperor decreed that the fair standards of 
Rome should not be risked again across the Rhine, 
but that there the Empire should stop, and the 
river should be the frontier. And so it remained 
for centuries to come. 



A ROMAN AND A BARBARIAN 

THERE lived in the fourth century, three hun- 
dred years after the Rhine-Danube boundary 
had been established, a fierce old Gothic chieftain 
who hated the Romans with a bitter hatred. He had 
fought against them in his young days, but that was 
not the cause of his bitterness. Now in his old age 
he must sit in his dwelling on the west bank of the 
river and see that every year there was more crossing 
and recrossing, that every year his people were becom- 
ing more friendly with the Romans. He had watched 
his comrades go across that stream. Fine, sturdy 
young men they had been, and they had gone to 
serve in the Roman armies as paid soldiers. Then 
he had seen them come back, middle-aged men, 
early broken down by hard labor and Roman fever, 
and worst of all by Roman vices. They had given 
their best years to the Romans ; they had won their 
victories for them ; but they had been carelessly 
thrown aside when they became too old for service. 
All this and much else the old man had seen, and 
he had come to know that friendship with the 
Romans was an evil thing for a barbarian people. 



THE BOY ATHANARIC 1 1 

Long hours the proud old warrior brooded over 
these matters, and one day he called to him his son 
Athanaric. Athanaric was a tall, handsome lad, with 
blue eyes which could blaze with anger when he was 
roused, and long, flaxen hair, which was the sign that 
he came of a family of chiefs. All the tribe loved 
the boy and looked to the day when they should 
choose him to be their leader, for the Goths were 
free men and chose whom they would to be their 
chief. The father's eyes rested on him with pride as 
he lay stretched on a bearskin at his feet, and then 
they grew stern and somber, for he had a purpose 
with the lad this day. He began to tell him tales of 
his forefathers. Hour after hour he related to him 
stories of these men who had been the heroes of 
the whole nation, and had added to the glory of 
the Gothic name, until the boy's heart was aflame 
with pride and his eyes shone like stars. 

Then the old man changed his tales. They were 
still of the Goths, but they were recitals of their 
dealings with the Romans, of Roman treachery, of 
Roman schemes for rending away their land from 
the Goths, — always of the Romans as ruthless and 
overbearing conquerors. Athanaric's cheeks burned 
with indignation as he listened, and he no longer lay 
at his father's feet but stood before him with hands 



12 BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 

clenched. Last of all, in a low, sad voice the old 
man told of traitor Goths who had forgotten their 
birthright of independence and sold themselves to 
the conquerors. First they had been only foolish 
youths who had sought to win favor from the Romans 
by imitating their ways of dress and of living. They 
had been flattered by the attention which the crafty 
enemy had bestowed on them and by the services 
which they were allowed to render. They had gone 
deeper and deeper into the toils and had sold them- 
selves and their honor for gold and position, until at 
last they had been disowned by their countrymen, 
and their names were never spoken. 

" Never so long as I live will I forgive the 
Romans," declared the boy, passionately. "Always 
I will hate them, and when I am a man I will fight 
them." 

"Yes, Athanaric, you shall fight them," replied 
the old warrior. " These arms of mine have lost 
their strength, and the blood runs slow in my veins ; 
but you in the strength of your young manhood will 
lead our people forth and drive the Romans back 
when they try to cross yonder stream by force, as 
they surely will ere many years are gone." 

Athanaric stood awed by the tone of assurance 
with which the old man spoke. 



THE PROMISE 1 3 

" Remember, my lad, when it comes to pass, what 
I have told you," and the old man looked far away 
across the river at the Roman towers as though he 
could see through them and beyond them. " The 
Goths will rue the day when they crossed to make 
friends with the Romans, for Roman armies shall 
find their way back. And now, Athanaric, promise 
me yet one thing, and I shall go to my grave in 
peace. Promise me, by the great Odin, ruler of the 
world, that never so long as you live will you set 
foot on Roman soil." 

So Athanaric gave his promise, and his father's 
heart was satisfied, for now he knew that no one 
could deceive the lad and lure him away to destruc- 
tion with promises of Roman gold or fame. 

It came to pass, as the old man had foretold, that 
in the days when Athanaric was chief of the Goths 
the Romans tried to overstep the banks of the river. 
The strife was long and bloody, and the time came 
when both sides were glad to come together and 
discuss terms of peace. 

Preceded by two standard bearers, who bore the 
royal purple banners of the emperor, the messenger 
came to the rude camp of the Goths. On the outskirts 
he was halted by a soldier who inquired his errand. 



14 BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 

" Let me pass," demanded the Roman in an in- 
solent tone. " I bear a message from my master 
to yours." 

" That it is from your master I doubt not," re- 
torted the guard, "but the Goths have no masters. 
We are free men, and all nobly born as well." 

It was a clever shot, and true withal, for the name 
of Goth means " nobly born " and the Goths were 
proud to call themselves a nation of nobles when 
the Romans taunted them with being a nation of 
barbarians. The flush on the cheek of the ambassa- 
dor showed that it had reached its mark, for he was, 
as it happened, one of the hired foreigners who had 
been promoted to high rank for the service he had 
rendered ; but it still rankled that he was often 
looked down upon because he could not call himself 
a Roman born. 

Without further words the guard led him to the 
hut of Athanaric, and there he learned the second 
lesson that had come to him that morning, for the 
haughtiness of the Roman ambassador made no 
more impression on the barbarian chief than his 
insolence had made upon the guard. To the mes- 
sage of invitation which Emperor Valens had sent, 
summoning him to a conference at which a truce 
could be concluded, Athanaric had but one answer. 



ATHANARIC'S REFUSAL 15 

He had sworn that he would never set foot on 
Roman soil. Therefore he could not come to the 
royal tent. Gladly would he receive the Emperor 
Valens in his camp, but an oath was an oath. Yes, 
he was willing to confer concerning a truce, and his 
people were willing to end the war, provided the 
Romans would make certain promises ; but the fact 
remained, he had sworn that he would not set foot 
on Roman soil, and set foot he would not ! The 
ambassador threatened and commanded and pleaded, 
but to no purpose. He was forced to return to the 
Roman camp with the refusal of the stiff-necked bar- 
barian and the message that Athanaric would gladly 
receive Emperor Valens in his own camp. The 
messenger could scarce conceal a smile when he 
gave the invitation to the emperor and contrasted 
the tapestry-hung pavilion of Valens, with its silken 
cushions, with the hut of green boughs in which he 
had been received across the river. But he knew 
in his heart that the rude barbarian was more of a 
man than the spoiled and flattered emperor, and he 
assured the Roman courtiers in no uncertain tone 
that it was of no use to try to change Athanaric's 
mind. He had sworn, and it was final. 

Valens stormed and raged and declared that the 
war might go on for all he cared. It was naught to 



1 6 BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 

him if the barbarians were not ready to make peace. 
The man should come to him, or there should be no 
peace. That was the end of the matter. 

The statesmen and generals who were the em- 
peror's advisers waited till his storm of anger had 
passed ; in truth they were very angry themselves 
at the barbarian's message. When their wrath had 
cooled somewhat they set about making a plan, and 
with it they went to Valens. 

" My lord," said the chief general of- the army, " we 
know that you are a god on earth, and this other is 
but a rude barbarian. Yet remember the battles we 
have lost and the men who have been drowned in 
the miserable Gothic swamps or overcome in the 
tangled forests. It is a wilderness beyond the river, 
and they are a savage and heathen people who 
defend it. What care we whether we possess it 
or not ? " 

" I care not a fig for the land of the Goths," 
replied Valens, pettishly. " But no man shall say to 
me, Come, and force me to come at his bidding, for 
■am I not the emperor of the Romans, and nearer in 
rank to the gods than any man on earth ? " 

Then they told him the plan which they had 
made, — that a Roman barge should be moored in the 
middle of the stream, and on it the truce should be 



THE RIVER TREATY 17 

concluded. Thus the dignity of the Roman name 
should be preserved, and yet the barbarian would be 
able to keep his vow. And so it was arranged and 
carried out. On a well-moored barge in the middle 
of the swift-flowing river the two met, the lordly em- 
peror and the stern, proud chieftain. There a peace 
was concluded that was dishonoring to neither name. 
By its terms the Romans were to hold in security 
all their former possessions, while the barbarians 
agreed not to cross the river nor attack the Roman 
frontier. So the old-time boundary of Augustus, 
which had been in danger, was renewed, and, as his 
father had desired, Athanaric agreed that neither he 
nor his nation should cross over to trouble the 
Romans, provided Rome in her turn gave promise 
not to disturb the Goths in the possession of all the 
great region that lay on the east side of the Rhine 
and Danube rivers. 



THE COMING OF THE WITCH 
PEOPLE 



ELDOM has a man lived 
in stranger or more stir- 
ring times than Athanaric 
the Goth. A rough, rude 
barbarian, born on Gothic 
soil and bred in the hatred 
of all that was Roman, he 
was destined to die in a 
Roman city and be given 
at his death honors which 
were the means of bring- 
ing his people into friend- 
ly alliance with Rome. 
Nowhere in all history is 
there a stranger tale. 
Surely no human power 
could move the man who had made the greatest 
Roman on earth, the emperor of all the world, come 
to him. So Athanaric must have thought in his 
pride, and the story is that in the years after the con- 
ference on the river he grew more and more cruel. 




^>^- 



THE WANDERING OF THE PEOPLES 19 

His hatred of the Romans increased, and he pun- 
ished with horrible brutality all the gentler spirits 
among his own people who sought to better in any 
way the rough, rude barbarism in which he had been 
bred. To him all civilization was of the Romans, and 
therefore to be despised. 

But a more than mortal force was guiding the des- 
tinies of the nations. Athanaric was living at the 
beginning of the period of the wandering of the 
peoples, when a strange spirit of restlessness seized 
many tribes and nations, and they left their homes 
and crowded one upon another, pushing their neigh- 
bors hither and thither. Europe was in those cen- 
turies a chaos of languages and races and peoples, 
from which there came forth our modern nations 
of Spain and Italy, France, Germany, and Austria, 
Russia and Turkey. It was this tide which caught 
Athanaric in its grasp, and swept him, hurled him, 
almost against his will or plan, into the arms of 
Rome ; and this is how it befell. 

There came to Athanaric in his mountain domain 
tales of a strange, savage people from the east who 
were ravaging and destroying the homes of his 
Gothic kinsfolk many hundred miles eastward in the 
regions north of the Caspian and the Black seas. 
Athanaric marveled that any people, however strong, 



20 BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 

should be able to conquer these fierce and warlike 
tribes ; but he did not dream that he would ever 
hear more of them. Soon they would be stopped in 
their march and driven back to their distant homes. 
Probably they had been already, for news traveled 
slowly, and the word had come by one tribe and 
another more than two thousand miles. 

In another year, however, the reports arrived more 
frequently. A frightened chieftain came twenty days' 
journey to gain a promise that Athanaric would give 
him his aid, should the Huns inarch westward and 
attack his kingdom. 

"Why do you fear?" questioned Athanaric. 
u They have still by your own story eight hundred 
miles, more than eighty days' journey for such a 
wandering army, before they can reach your borders. 
Surely they will be turned back long before that." 

"Ah, but they come like the wind, those Huns," 
replied the chief. " Night and day they live upon 
their horses. On their backs they take their meat 
and drink ; they even sleep on them and journey 
thus by night." 

" By great Odin, you are all driven senseless by 
your fear," thundered Athanaric in scorn. " I am 
ashamed of you. What if they do come on horses ? 
What if they are good fighters ? Have you not driven 



THE WITCH PEOPLE 21 

back many tribes ? Have you not held your lands 
against many enemies ? Where is the courage of our 
forefathers ? What would they think of those who 
hold the name of Goth if they saw them cringing 
before a wandering people from China ? " 

"You do not know; you do not understand," re- 
plied the chief. " Once I spoke as you do ; once I 
taunted my kinsfolk with cowardice. But now I know." 

" But what is it that you know ? " cried Athanaric. 
" You shake your head and look wise, but you do 
not say. What is it that makes these Huns so 
terrible to you that you lose your manhood and 
become as frightened children ? " 

Then the chief told him. This was no human 
folk, it seemed, that was fighting its way nearer 
and nearer. It was a witch people, born of witch 
women and evil spirits. Men could not meet them 
in fair fight, for the awful ugliness of their faces cast 
a spell upon the strongest men and made them turn 
and flee rather than gaze upon them. Moreover, 
there was no stopping their progress, for an evil 
spirit was leading them. Certain of the Gothic wise 
men had heard the story of how the Huns came in 
their wanderings to the banks of the strip of water 
that separates Asia and Europe. They would have 
halted and turned another way, toward northern 



2 2 BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 

China or the plains of Russia. " Ah ! would that 
they had halted ! " sighed the Gothic chief. " But a 
stag suddenly appeared before them and entered the 
waters. As he swam across he kept looking back as 
if inviting them to follow. So they came and found 
that what they had thought to be a deep and trackless 
sea was a shallow strait. An evil spirit brought them, 
and mortal power will not be able to turn them back." 

Athanaric laughed the story to scorn. 

"You are the ones who are bewitched," he told 
the chief, " and by your own foolishness." 

The chief went back to his own land, and Atha- 
naric put the story from his mind, wondering only 
that so brave a man should have been so deceived. 
But before long he was forced to heed, for his 
valleys were filled with a constant stream of men, 
women, and children, who were fleeing from this 
terror that was behind them. Whole tribes had been 
seized with panic at the coming of the Huns, and 
were hastening in blind, unreasoning terror, on, on, 
on to the river. That was their cry as they passed 
through the land. " The river, the river ! On the 
other side of the river we shall be safe." 

" But the Romans dwell on the other side of the 
river. They are your enemies ; they will make you 
slaves," protested Athanaric and his people. 



CROSSING THE RIVER 



23 



The flying tribes did not stop to reply. They had 
but one thought, — to put the river between them and 
this terrible witch people. The Romans might en- 
slave them ; but the Huns would do worse, for they 
had the evil eye. Month after month it went on, 
and though they had not seen the Huns, yet the 
fear of them began to creep into the hearts of Atha- 
naric's own people. Neighboring tribes fled into the 
arms of the Romans, throwing themselves, as they 
said, on Roman mercy. Roman mercy ! that was a 
strange word in the mouths of the Goths, and it 
came to be a sad word, for it took from them all 
that they held dear. No man might cross the river 
and come under the protection of Rome who did not 
first give up every weapon in his possession. It took 
from them their sons and their daughters, who were 
sold away in slave markets. It left them nothing, in- 
deed, but their lives and the lands on which they 
lived. The long-haired Goths might well have cut 
their flaxen locks when they set foot on the western 
bank of the river, for they were meaningless as a 
badge of freedom on Roman soil. 

So it went on during many years, for peoples 
do not move in a day, and the Huns would pause in 
their ravages for one year, or two, when they came 
to a rich and fertile valley, and then the wandering 



24 BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 

spirit would seize them and they would press on. 
Athanaric met them in battle not once but many 
times, for his were the bravest people of the Goths, 
as they were the most fierce and cruel, and they 
fought with spirit even though their hearts were filled 
with a nameless fear. But they were defeated and 
driven farther and farther into the mountain fast- 
nesses, until the time came when Athanaric alone of 
all the Gothic chiefs had not asked protection from 
the Romans. The other tribes turned against him, 
looking with jealousy on his lands, till the proud 
old chief was sore beset on every side. 

That was the chance for Rome. The emperor 
(it was the one who succeeded Valens) sent from 
Constantinople, the eastern capital of the Empire, ar 
embassy to pay respect to Athanaric for his grea 
name and fame, and to offer to him an honorable 
treaty. Athanaric waited long before he yielded. 
His people with one accord urged him to accept. 
If he refused, they would be between two enemies, 
the Huns, who were ever coming nearer, and thei r 
Gothic kinsfolk who had turned against them. Mort 
over, it was an honorable treaty, written in fair terms. 
So they persuaded him, and Athanaric yielded. He 
was an old man and weary of war and fighting. His 
promise to his father that he would never set foot on 



THE PROMISE BROKEN 25 

Roman soil had grown dim with the years, and he 
told himself that times were changed by the coming 
of the Huns, and that his father would have done 
the same in his place. 

The emperor came out several miles from the city 
to meet the old barbarian chief, and gave him royal 
escort. 

" Lo, now I behold what I have so often heard 
with unbelief," the old man exclaimed, as he gazed 
in wonder at the splendid city. 

Turning his eyes this way and that, and beholding 
its glorious situation, its great harbors crowded with 
vessels, the strength and beauty of its walls and 
buildings, and the men of many nations who thronged 
its streets, he marveled, and exclaimed again in 
ivonder, " The emperor is without doubt a god upon 
earth, and he who lifts a hand against him is guilty 
of his own blood." 

The Romans feasted the old man and entertained 
him with all magnificence. Whether he was con- 
tent in the emperor's palace — this old Roman- 
r-rater — we do not know. Whether he saw that his 
father was right, and mourned his broken promise, 
he never told. After a few months' residence in 
Constantinople he died, and the emperor made for 
him a funeral of extraordinary magnificence. The 



26 BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 

flower of the Roman army bore the old chief to his 
grave, and the emperor himself in his royal purple 
robes rode before the bier. 

Roman friendship proved, as the father of Atha- 
naric had foretold, an evil thing for a barbarian 
people. The simple Goths were so pleased by the 
honor that had been paid to their chief that they 
were easily led into a closer league than ever before 
with the Romans. The emperor had given a gor- 
geous funeral ; he gained an army of many thou- 
sand men, and it was through the yielding of 
Athanaric, through his consenting to set foot on 
Roman soil, that the evil was wrought. 

Wise men of the Goths saw, when it was too late, 
that they had gone too far ; but by that time their 
people were scattered here and there, fighting Roman 
battles and obeying the commands of Roman gen- 
erals, and there was none to gather them. For a 
whole generation they served the Romans, and then 
from their midst there rose a leader to deliver them, 
the great Alaric, Alaric the Bold. 



ALARIC THE GOTH 



HIUDANS! Thiudans! 

[The king ! the king ! ] " 
So the barbarians shouted 
as they raised on the shield, 
that he might be seen of 
all men, their newly chosen 
king, the fair-haired Alaric. 
They might shout as loudly 
as they pleased, for there 
were no Roman spies to 
hear. They had come away 
from Rome,across the broad 
Danube, and on their own 
plains, with the fresh moun- 
tain winds blowing upon 
them, they were renewing 
the traditions of their race and choosing a leader 
who should revive the glory of the Gothic name. 

Trained in Roman legions in the years since the 
death of Athanaric, the young man Alaric had not 
forgotten that he was born on an island in the Dan- 
ube. He had not lost the memory of the chill winds 

27 




28 BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 

of the north, which were to the Goths the signs that 
they were in a free land. He had learned the lessons 
of war from the leaders of his enemy ; he had risen to 
captaincy and had won notice from the general for 
his bravery. Now at the call of his people he had 
gladly turned his back on the warm southland, to 
have the breath of freedom blow across his face 
once more, and behold ! to his astonishment they 
had chosen him king. 

It was no secret among the barbarians that this 
choice was of a leader who could help them throw off 
the hated Roman yoke. The Romans were not the 
proud people of the days of Drusus. They had been 
too fond of power and of luxurious living. They had 
had too many strong barbarians to fight their battles 
for them, and had become content to sit idle in their 
palaces, drinking and gambling and scheming for 
wealth and position. The Gothic leaders had seen 
all this ; they had come to scorn the conquerors 
whom once they had feared ; and now they had 
chosen this tall, fair-skinned youth, who combined 
the strength of the barbarian with the warlike skill of 
the Roman captain, and bore moreover the prophetic 
name Alaric, Ala-reichs, which is to say, All-ruler. 

The words of the old record concerning the be- 
ginning of his reign are full of meaning. " The new 



THE MESSAGE 29 

king, taking counsel with his people, decided that 
they should carve out for themselves new kingdoms 
rather than through sloth continue the subjects of 
others." 

Once and again Alaric led his people forth against 
the Romans. In Greece and Constantinople and in 
all the eastern possessions of Rome the name of 
" Alaric the Barbarian" became a word of terror. 
Then there came to him a strange call. As he was 
worshiping in a sacred grove he heard a voice repeat- 
ing once and again these words, " Proceed to Rome, 
and make that city desolate." 

The young chief brooded over the message for 
many days, pondering whether he had been deceived 
by a dream. But ever the words rang in his ears, 
" Proceed to Rome, and make that city desolate," 
and he felt a power within him urging him irresis- 
tibly on. He marshaled his armies and led them 
westward over the central plains of Europe, ravaging 
as he went. The Romans thought the march only 
one more barbarian invasion. The Goths were tak- 
ing with them their women and children, but that was 
the curious custom of all barbarian nations. Their 
wars were for conquest of land, not for slaughter. If 
they won the battles they would stay and occupy the 
land with their wives and their children. Even the 



30 BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 

Gothic army did not believe that the purpose of 
Alaric would be carried out. Until he came to the 
passes of the Alps, to the gates of Italy itself, they 
doubted whether it could be possible that any barba- 
rian nation would be permitted to meet the Romans 
in their own land. They had suffered many defeats 
by the way, and they had lost many brave warriors. 
Now the day had come when they must choose 
whether they would pass over into Italy or turn back 
to settle once again in their chill northern plains. 

Alaric called a council, and the record of it, writ- 
ten in Latin on a roll of parchment, has been pre- 
served to this day. 

" The long-haired fathers of the Gothic nation, 
their fur-clad senators marked with many an honor- 
able scar, assembled. The old men leaned on their 
tall clubs. One of the most venerable of these vet- 
erans arose, fixed his eyes upon the ground, shook 
his white and shaggy locks, and spoke : 

1 Thirty years have now elapsed since first we 
crossed the Danube and confronted the might of 
Rome. But never, believe me in this, O Alaric, have 
the odds lain so heavily against us as now. Trust 
the old chief who, like a father, once dandled thee 
in his arms, who gave thee thy first tiny quiver. 
Often have I, in vain, admonished thee to keep the 



THE GOTHIC COUNCIL 31 

treaty with Rome, and remain safely within the 
limits of the eastern realm. But now, at any rate, 
while thou still art able, return, flee the Italian soil. 
Why talk to us perpetually of the fruitful vines of 
Etruria, of the Tiber, and of Rome ? If our fathers 
have told us aright, that city is protected by the Im- 
mortal Gods, lightnings are darted from afar against 
the presumptuous invader, and fires, heaven-kindled, 
flit before its walls.' 

"Alaric burst in upon the old man's speech with 
fiery brow and scowling eyes : 

'If age had not bereft thee of reason, old dotard, 
I would punish thee for these insults. Shall I, who 
have put so many emperors to flight, listen to thee, 
prating of peace ? No, in this land I will reign as 
conqueror, or be buried after defeat. Only Rome 
remains to be overcome. In the day of our weakness 
and calamity we were terrible to our foes. Now in 
our power shall we turn our backs on those same ene- 
mies ? No ! Besides all other reasons for hope there 
is certainty of divine help. Forth from the grove 
has come once more a clear voice, heard of many, 
" Break off all delays, Alaric. This very year if thou 
lingerest not, thou shalt pierce through the Alps into 
Italy ; thou shalt penetrate to the city itself." ' 

"So he spoke, and drew up his army for battle." 




ALARIC DESCENDING ON ROME 



3 2 



BARBARIANS BEFORE ROME 33 

The victory must have been with the Goths that 
day, for the army went on through the passes into 
Italy, and ere long we hear of the barbarians as before 
the walls of Rome. 

Then the whole world was in terror. That bar- 
barians, skin-clothed barbarians, should have come to 
the gates of the great city, for six hundred years the 
ruler of the world, was a surprise to the barbarians 
themselves. To the Romans it was as if the sky 
had fallen. 

Day after day the Gothic army lay encamped be- 
fore the city, guarding the entrances that no food 
should enter by land or water ; and hour after hour 
the Roman senate watched the north for the looked- 
for help from the army of the emperor, but none 
came. First the allowance of food to each person 
was reduced to one half ; then to one third. Two 
noble ladies, who were entitled to draw from the im- 
perial storehouses, gave of their portions to the 
people ; but it was but a pittance among so many. 

Then the proud Roman nobles sent out an em- 
bassy to Alaric. For all their need they did not cringe 
or beg. There is the sound in their words of the 
old days when Rome was mistress of all the world. 

"The Roman people," the message read, "are 
prepared to make peace on moderate terms, but 



34 



BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 



they are yet prepared for war. They have arms in 
their hands, and from long practice in their use 
they have no reason to dread the battle." 

Alaric heard the words with a shout of laughter, 
and answered them with a Gothic proverb, "The 
thicker the grass, the easier mown." The cultured 
Romans must have shrunk back with disgust from 
the rough, insolent barbarian with whom they were 
forced to treat. But their plight was desperate, and 
they must curb their pride and stay till the rude 
mirth had ceased and a fitting reply had been given 
to their message. 

" Deliver to me all the gold that your city contains, 
all the silver, all the treasures that may be moved, 
and in addition all your slaves of barbarian origin ; 
otherwise I desist not from the siege." 

" But if you take all these things," said one of the 
ambassadors, " what do you leave for the citizens ? " 

"Your lives," returned Alaric with a grim smile. 

The message threw the Roman senate into the 
blackest despair. What was there left that they could 
do ? The emperor had deserted them ; even the God 
of the Christians, to whom they had recently sworn 
allegiance, seemed to have forgotten them. There 
was but one chance left. Perhaps their heathen gods 
who had helped their fathers in battle would aid 



THE RANSOM 



35 



them in this extremity. It is a weird scene that 
comes before us. On the Capitoline Hill, with 
Christian churches all about them, the Roman senate 
assembled to see the old ceremonies practiced, the 
old fires lighted, and the omens watched, by priests 
of the heathen faith which had been for a generation 
discredited. The hour passed and no help came. A 
second time the gates were opened and a train of 
suppliant Romans went forth to the camp of the 
conqueror to see what terms could be obtained. 

It is a curious list of things which the barbarians 
wanted. It reminds us that they were after all but 
children — forest children — who fought because the 
desire for victory was on them, but knew not what to 
do with the power they won save to purchase for 
themselves toys and gay-colored trifles. Five thou- 
sand pounds of gold, thirty thousand pounds of sil- 
ver, four thousand silken tunics, three thousand hides 
dyed in scarlet, and three thousand pounds of pepper, 
— these things Alaric would take in exchange for the 
city which he had conquered but had not entered. 

The Romans went back to see how they could get 
these things. Was there as much gold in the city as 
the barbarians demanded ? With picturesque justice 
they turned on the gold and silver idols, images of 
the gods to whom they had made their appeal in vain, 



36 BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 

and threw them into the melting pots to make up 
the required weight. The story goes that they even 
cast in the statue of Valor, the symbol of Roman 
bravery and power, and that from that day valor 
went out from among the Romans, and their cour- 
age left them forever. 

So ended the first siege of Rome. No swords had 
been crossed ; not a drop of blood had been shed. 
With his cartloads of treasure Alaric returned to 
the rich provinces of northern Italy, and, as humbly 
as though he were not a conqueror feared of all men, 
sent to the Roman emperor to ask that a portion of 
land be allotted to him and his tribe, that they and 
their wives and children might dwell there. It is 
the strangest part of the whole strange tale of the 
barbarian invasions of Italy, this reverence for the 
office of Roman emperor and for the name of Rome. 
Rome had so long been the height of earthly power 
to the barbarians that even when it was but a shadow 
of its former self, even when it was conquered by 
force and lay in their power, the simple barbarians 
held back in awe and asked as suppliants of the weak, 
spoiled Roman emperors that they be granted the 
land which they had already seized. And the Roman 
emperors in their foolishness refused, shutting their 
eyes to the chance that was before them of saving 



THE SACK OF ROME 37 

their nation and their city. Two years the emperor 
dallied with Alaric, promising this and that, and fail- 
ing to carry out his word, and at last breaking off the 
negotiations altogether. 

Then Alaric marched once more on Rome. This 
time he did not stop outside the walls to blockade by 
famine. The barbarians were not in the mood for 
delay. They broke open the gates and rushed into 
the city, and Rome was at their mercy. The orders 
of Alaric are just and merciful. No sacred buildings 
were to be destroyed, and any one who entered a 
church was to be secure from harm. Human life 
was to be spared as far as possible. 

How far his orders were carried out by the bar- 
barian hordes we do not know. No record has come 
down to us of what happened in those days of Gothic 
pillage, save that many palaces and beautiful build- 
ings were burned. It was not the actual damage that 
they wrought that made the sack of Rome by Alaric 
and the Goths so terrible ; it was the fact that Rome, 
the center of the world, the sign of law and order 
and civilization, could be taken by rude barbarian 
hordes. The old order was passing away, and none 
could tell what the new was to be ; but that there 
were grievous and troubled times in store for Europe 
no wise man doubted. 




3§ 



THE DEATH OF ALARIC 39 

Three days only the barbarians stayed in Rome, 
and then they wandered southward. In the south of 
Italy, before he had carried out any of his great plans 
of conquest and occupation of the land, suddenly death 
came to Alaric. Perhaps it was the dread Roman 
fever which laid the northern barbarian low. There 
he died, and his people were left, as children with- 
out a guide. Bitterly they mourned the loss of their 
great ruler, and before they turned to find their way 
back to the north they buried him in the land which 
he had conquered. 

Lest the enemy should find his body and dishonor 
it, they laid him in the bed of a river. They had 
forced the captives whom they had taken at Rome 
to build a dam by which the stream might be turned 
from its course. Here, in the dead of night, they 
laid the body of their leader in a grave filled with 
trophies and treasures which he had won from the 
Romans. When the rude ceremony was over, the 
captives were ordered to turn back the waters, and 
after they had done their work they were put to 
death, that none of Roman blood should know where 
the barbarian chief lay. 

So died, in the year 410, Alaric the Goth, the great 
barbarian who sounded for the first time the note of 
doom to the Roman Empire. 



ATTILA THE SCOURGE OF GOD 

THAT was what the writers of the Christian 
faith called him, for they believed that the 
coming of Attila the Hun and his barbarian hordes 
into the fair provinces on the western side of the 
great rivers was a judgment on the nations of 
Europe, a visitation sent upon them in punishment 
for their sins. 

It was fifty years since Athanaric and his Gothic 
tribes had been forced by the Huns into the arms 
of Rome, and for all that half century the danger of 
Hunnish invasion had hung over Europe like a 
thundercloud, black and forbidding. The storm 
might break here, it might break there. None 
could tell, for the Huns fought not by plan nor by 
reason, but for sudden impulse, for a mad spirit of 
restlessness, for a fierce lust of battle. 

The Romans kept them at bay for a time by pay- 
ment of gold. They found that this barbarian mob, 
clad in dingy skin tunics and living on raw meat 
and uncooked grain, who chose to make themselves 
hideous by gashing their cheeks with the sword in 

infancy that their beards should not grow, — this 

4 o 



THE COMING OF THE HUNS 41 

people, more barbarous than barbarism itself, had 
developed in the half century of their contact with 
civilized peoples one engrossing, absorbing passion, 
the greed for gold. They did not know how to 
measure its value, for it was new to them. The first 
year that they threatened, the Romans bought them 
off from attacking any part of the Empire for nine- 
teen pounds of gold. Nineteen pounds to keep back 
a nation of ninety thousand warriors ! And it was 
but a few years since Alaric the Goth had demanded 
and received five thousand pounds of gold, thirty 
thousand pounds of silver, and much treasure beside, 
as a price for the safety of Rome. But the Huns 
learned. Twenty years later the ransom money was 
three hundred and fifty pounds, and then in a single 
year it was doubled. 

That was the year when in the chronicles of the 
nations it was written that "the kingdom of the 
Huns passed unto Attila." 

Attila was a typical Hun, little in stature but 
broad-shouldered and deep-chested, with swarthy 
skin and small, beadlike black eyes which were 
never still but darted fierce glances to this side and 
that, as if, says the Roman narrator, " he felt him- 
self to be lord of all and was perpetually asking of 
those about him, ' Who is he that shall deliver you 



42 BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 

out of my hand?" He delighted to inspire men 
with fear of what he would do to them. It was part 
of his fierce, unquenchable pride that every one 
should come into his presence with dread. He 
longed to be a terror to the whole world. Nothing 
pleased him more than to be called "The Destroyer" ; 
and to see the proud rulers of the proudest nations 
on earth cringe before him, — that was the aim and 
ambition of his life. Attila probably never spent a 
happier hour than when he sat at his banquet table 
and saw seated before him suppliant ambassadors 
from the two great capitals of the Roman Empire. 
It was part of his pleasure that the Romans never 
passed a more unpleasant day. 

The ambassadors had started from Rome and 
Constantinople, each party without knowledge of the 
other, with orders to seek the newly elected king of 
the Huns wherever he might be, and confer with 
him about the tribute money. The Roman nobles 
expected it to be a disagreeable mission. They did 
not dream it was to be as unpleasant as Attila suc- 
ceeded in making it for them. 

Their first task was to find the Hunnish king. 
They had heard that he held some sort of rude 
court away off on the Hungarian plains ; but as 
they came nearer the frontiers of the Roman Empire 



THE JOURNEY 43 

they found that the barbarian king had been on a 
plundering expedition and was only a couple of days' 
journey ahead of them. Every city on the route was 
deserted and empty. The inhabitants had fled at the 
approach of the Huns, or had been driven out by 
the sword if they had lingered too long, and they 
had not yet dared to creep back, for fear the enemy 
might return. 

On the banks of the Danube the Romans came 
up with the barbarians. Every road was crowded 
with Huns, and the river was full of unwieldy boats 
fashioned from hollow logs, in which ferrymen were 
transporting the people to the farther bank. Roman 
gold gained for the travelers a speedy passage, and 
on the second day after crossing the river they came 
in sight of the tents of Attila. 

Rejoicing that they were to be spared the long 
journey into the interior, the ambassadors began 
to pitch their tents on a hilltop near by, but their 
preparations were speedily interrupted. A party of 
Hunnish horsemen dashed up the hill, and their 
leader demanded furiously what the Romans meant 
by presuming to camp on such high land. " It would 
be quite improper," he declared, " for the Roman 
ambassadors to occupy the hill while Attila was below 
in the valley." 



44 BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 

This was but the first of a series of petty humilia- 
tions which Attila took a fiendish pleasure in impos- 
ing on the Roman, nobles. He dallied so long about 
granting any audience to them that they seriously 
feared lest he should refuse to treat with them at all. 
Then he allowed them to see him and accepted their 
gifts, but refused to come to any discussion of terms. 
Finally he sent a message to their tent, commanding 
them to go to his " palace " in the interior, where 
he would give them his answer. 

We can imagine the disgust of the Romans at 
being forced to plunge into the wilderness at the 
caprice of this rude barbarian. But they had no 
choice ; on their success depended the peace of 
Europe for a twelvemonth. It was a forsaken 
country through which they must travel, and they 
suffered many hardships on the way. They had 
to cross three great rivers and ford innumerable 
streams. It was the flood time of the year, and 
even the roads were little better than swamps. 
They could buy nothing in the villages along the 
way but a kind of grain called millet. 

After they had journeyed in this fashion for seven 
days and nights, and were rejoicing that one more day 
would bring them to their destination, they received 
abrupt orders to halt. They had been traveling too 



THE BANQUET 45 

fast, it seemed, and had got ahead of Attila. He 
was to come over the road which they were now to 
take, and it was part of his pride that the Romans 
must not precede him even on the road to his 
own home. 

While the Romans waited, with ill-concealed im- 
patience, in the miserable little Hungarian village, they 
met the other Roman embassy, recently arrived from 
Constantinople and held up, as were their companions 
in misery, until the royal bridegroom should arrive. 
Attila's pride might well be satisfied when embassies 
from the two capitals of the world were forced to 
wait until he came through and gave them permission 
to follow in his train. They must stand by and see 
the barbarian monarch served from a silver table, 
held up before him that he might eat and drink 
without dismounting from his horse. At last, when 
he gave the word, they might come on to the village 
where he had established his court, and on the 
second day of their stay they were invited to a banquet. 

" Punctually at three o'clock," writes the ambas- 
sador, " we went to the dinner and stood on the 
threshold of Attila's palace. According to the cus- 
tom of the country the cupbearers brought us a 
bowl of wine that we might drink and pray for the 
good luck of our host before sitting down." 



46 BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 

Attila half sat, half reclined on a couch behind a 
table raised above the board. He would not demean 
himself by being on a level with his guests. Nor 
did he converse with them. Throughout the meal 
he sat silent and sullen at the head of the table. 

When the feasting was over, and the singers and 
harpists came in and chanted verses in praise of his 
victories and his might, his face did not change. 
Clowns came and did their tricks and made their 
jests, and all the company were in roars of laughter, 
but Attila did not smile. With unmoved face he 
sat silent while the others shouted with merriment, 
until at last the mirth was stilled and the Romans 
sat silent and uncomfortable, shooting furtive glances 
at their strange host. 

The Huns remained at the table drinking till far 
into the night, but the Romans slipped away from 
the wild, barbarous orgy. Three days later they were 
dismissed with their business accomplished, and turned 
their backs with rejoicing on the barbarian court. 

Attila was content for ten years to receive an ever- 
increasing tribute from the Romans. Then, making 
alliance with the Vandals in the west and the Franks 
in the north, he prepared to pour his barbarian 
hordes into the plains of Europe and wipe out the 
civilized nations that occupied the land. 




47 



48 BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 

The great question was, Would the Romans and 
Goths unite against the Huns ? We to-day can see 
that on the answer to that question hung the fate of 
Europe. If they did, Europe might be saved ; if 
they did not, Europe and civilization were doomed. 
Attila feared that they would combine, and did his 
best to prevent it. To the Gothic king he sent mes- 
sengers to explain that this was the time to destroy 
Rome, the hated conqueror, and to the emperor he 
represented that this was a chance to drive out the 
Goths, against whom they had so long waged war, 
and regain their supremacy. But the Romans and 
Goths had learned wisdom since the days of Alaric. 

The Gothic peoples had come into Italy by means 
of the sword. Then they had lost their great leader 
and been left in the land they had coveted, a vast, 
unwieldy army burdened with long wagon trains of 
treasure and great camps of women and children. 
" Before two years were ended," says the historian, 
" God moved the hearts of the invaders to occupy 
the land without wasting it. The wandering hosts 
settled down and became nations dwelling under 
their kings on conquered soil." 

So the two races had dwelt together, and a new 
generation had been born to each. They had come 
to know each other, and though there had not always 



BARBARIAN AGAINST BARBARIAN 



49 



been peace between them, yet the dark-haired Italian 
noble had found that his tall, fair-haired, fair-skinned 
neighbor from the north was not so different from 
himself as he had supposed. The Goths were the 
noblest of all the barbarian nations, and if it took 
them some time to learn all the grace of civilization 
from their cultured neighbors, yet they brought with 
them from the north a spirit of freedom, a purity, 
and an unspoiled strength which the Romans were 
forced to recognize, and to which they were glad to 
turn in this hour of need, when this Hunnish people, 
who were so barbarian that it made the Goths seem 
in comparison like their own race, threatened to come 
down upon them. 

So the Goths and the Romans united their armies 
and called in their allies, and in July of the year 
4 5 1 they met Attila and his forces on the battle field 
of Chalons, midway between the north and the south. 
Such a confusion of all the barbarian nations was 
never seen before nor since. On the one side were 
the Romans, a mere shadow people in numbers or 
power as compared to their great allies, the East 
Goths and West Goths, the Alans and the Saxons 
and the Britons, those barbarian peoples who were 
so fast being transformed into civilized nations, and 
who were soon to take up that work of maintaining 



50 BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 

law and order which the Romans were laying down. 
Against this army of nations, which had been united 
only by their common danger, stood the Huns and 
the allies from the Vandals and Franks and Ostro- 
goths whom they had been able to gather about 
their standard. It was a conflict of barbarian against 
barbarian, with every nation and tribe represented ; 
and the more noble barbarians won. Attila and his 
Huns used all the strange customs of fighting with 
which they had been wont to terrify the European 
world. They swept down from the neighboring hills 
with wild, discordant cries. Dashing through the 
lines of soldiery on horseback, they threw their lassos 
or nets round the bodies of their opponents, making 
them helpless. " It was a battle," says an eyewitness, 
"which for ruthlessness, for multitude of men, for 
horror, and for stubbornness has not in all stories of 
similar encounters since the world began a parallel." 
Night fell, and the weary hosts were forced by the 
darkness to cease fighting ; but neither Goth nor 
Roman nor Hun knew till morning which side had 
been victorious. When day dawned the Goths and 
Romans, seeing that the Huns did not venture forth 
from their camp, concluded that the victory was 
theirs. But Attila, though so many of his followers 
had been cut down that he dared not renew the 



ATTILA HARD PRESSED 



51 



battle, yet did not admit defeat, " but clashed his 
arms, sounded his trumpets, and continually threat- 
ened a fresh attack. As a lion close pressed by his 
hunters, ramps up and down before the entrance to 
the cave, and neither dares make a spring, nor yet 
ceases to frighten all the neighborhood with his 
roarings, so did that most warlike king, though 
hemmed in, trouble his conquerors. The Goths and 
Romans accordingly called a council of war and 
deliberated what was to be done with their worsted 
foe. As he had no store of provisions, and as he 
had so posted his archers within the boundaries of 
his camp as to rain a shower of missiles on an 
advancing assailant, they decided not to attempt a 
storm, but to weary him out by a blockade. It is 
said that seeing his desperate plight the Hunnish 
king had constructed a funeral pyre of horses' sad- 
dles, determined, if the enemy should break into 
his camp, to hurl himself headlong into the flames, 
that none should boast himself and say, ' I have 
wounded Attila,' nor that the lord of so many nations 
should fall alive into the hands of his enemies." 

Attila was not forced to this desperate death. 
Though the victory was with the Goths it was not 
an unmixed triumph. They had lost their king and 
many thousands of men, and they deemed it wise 



BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 



not to press their success farther, but retired in their 
triumph, leaving the defeated chief to return with his 
conquered army beyond the Rhine. Both sides had 
suffered immense losses, and the Hunnish invaders 




had received for the first time a check in their march 
of destruction. 

Attila returned to his log hut, and there on the 
vast, lonely plains of Hungary he spent the winter 
brooding over his defeat and nursing his wounded 
pride. He became more silent and sullen than ever, 
until his courtiers came to be afraid of the motion- 
less figure of the king, who seemed hardly to heed 



ATTILA THE DESTROYER 53 

whether he was alone or whether a company was 
about him, but sat ever looking, looking toward the 
world beyond the river, toward Rome, which he 
longed to destroy. 

With the coming of spring Attila's energy re- 
turned, and he became once more the active, alert 
general, planning an Italian campaign by which he 
hoped to revive his fallen prestige and regain his 
position as a terror to the world. He was to succeed 
in part and for a time, but he was never to sweep 
things before him as he had in the days when the 
Huns were surrounded by a mysterious terror far be- 
yond their actual power of destruction. The Italian 
cities of the Venetian plains were forced to yield, but 
it was after long sieges and sharp battles. Still it 
was a terrible invasion, and Rome began to tremble 
lest once more she should find herself in the power 
of barbarians. 

The cities which Attila was conquering were the 
most beautiful cities in all Europe. Here had been 
collected treasures of art, statues of the golden age 
of Greek and Roman sculpture, paintings, beautiful 
vases, all preserved in the splendid palaces and 
churches and public buildings of Aquileia, Verona, 
Milan, and Pavia. In these marble palaces and amid 
these priceless treasures Attila and his Huns camped. 



54 BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 

To-day we cherish in museums the fragments whicK 
they left when they had thrown aside and smashed 
what was in their way or did not for some reason 
please them. In the palace where he stayed in Milan, 
Attila came one day, in the course of his wanderings 
through the great salons, upon a picture which filled 
him with rage. It was entitled " The Triumph of 
Rome over the Barbarians," and pictured the two 
Roman emperors sitting on their golden thrones, while 
conquered Scythians crouched at their feet in abject 
subjection. The " Scythians " were without doubt 
Goths, and the period of the picture at least a cen- 
tury before Attila 's time ; but Attila took it as a per- 
sonal insult to his race. With one of those strange 
impulses which make us see what shrewdness and 
humor were combined in this world conqueror with 
his more terrible qualities, he did not destroy the pic- 
ture, but called an artist, whom he commanded to 
paint a companion picture on the opposite wall. In 
this painting Attila sat on his throne, and the two 
emperors knelt humbly before him, one with a huge 
sack of tribute money still on his shoulder, the other 
pouring out before him a heap of gold pieces from 
another bag. 

Another side of the character of this strange man 
was soon to be shown. It was time for him to turn 




ATTILA BEFORE THE POPE 



55 



56 BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 

southward in his march toward Rome. As Alaric 
had paused in the passes of Switzerland, so he 
paused, and his counselors, filled with the awe 
which every barbarian host felt when it came face to 
face with the world power which they had so long 
reverenced, reminded him of the fate of Alaric which 
came on him so soon after he had taken the Eternal 
City, and advised him to turn back. 

Attila did not turn back, but the strange awe of 
Rome began to steal over his heart. As he rode on 
at the head of his army he was met by an embassy 
frori) Rome, headed by a commanding figure. Pope 
Leo I, head of the great Christian Church, which 
stood for the spiritual power of Christendom, had come 
to turn Attila from his purpose of attacking Rome. 
One man — of commanding presence, it is true, and 
quiet strength — but one man against an army of bar- 
barians ! Ah ! but he stood for all which the super- 
stitious barbarian feared. He had behind him a might 
before which Attila did well to tremble. Civilization, 
with all its constructive power of religion to uplift and 
lead men, stood over against barbarism, with its super- 
stition and its fierce power of destruction. And civili- 
zation triumphed. The awe of Rome fell upon Attila, 
and he turned back, murmuring, " What gain indeed 
if I conquer like Alaric, to die with him ? " 



THEODORIC 



mmft 



ING THEUDEMIR sat 
in his carved seat at the head 
of the long Gothic hall, 
thinking deeply. Warriors 
of hostile nations, who met 
the king only when he was 
commanding his troops in 
war, could not understand 
why his people called him 
"Theudemir the Affection- 
ate," "Theudemir the Good," 
and " Theudemir the Be- 
loved." To them the stern, 
fierce general who was always 
in the forefront of the battle 
seemed more like some old 
Teutonic war-god, appearing on earth once more in 
human form. Had they seen him to-night, as the 
firelight played about his features, they would not 
have wondered at the love his people bore him, for 
the piercing blue eyes were gentle, and the stern 
lines of his face were softened. All the court had 

57 




58 BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 

gone on a hunt, but Theudemir had remained at 
home to consider what answer he should give to the 
message which had come that morning from the 
Roman court. His little son^ Theodoric, had come 
with his tiny broadsword to show him the new drill 
which he had learned, and his wife, the fair queen 
Erelieva, had sat with him for a time ; but he had 
sent them both away and was alone with his problem. 

It was the old story of tribute money and bound- 
aries, but now it was the Romans who paid the 
money, hiding its real meaning under the name of 
" New Year's presents," and they paid it only to 
the barbarian nations from whom they feared attack. 
When at the beginning of the new year the money 
failed to come, the East Goths had known that some- 
thing was wrong. The messengers whom Theudemir 
sent to Constantinople returned from their mission 
humiliated and angry. The emperor had transferred 
his friendship to another Gothic chieftain, another 
Theodoric, who sat at his table and took the money 
that had been theirs, assuring the emperor that the 
East Goths were a feeble and unimportant nation 
of whom he need not take an anxious thought. 

The East Goths had soon shown Emperor Leo 
his mistake. Theudemir smiled as he thought of the 
quick raid into the nearest Roman provinces which 



THE ROMAN DEMAND 59 

had followed closely on the return of the ambassadors. 
There was never a Goth who would not rather rav- 
age his neighbor's field for corn and grain, even at 
the risk of his life, than plant and till and harvest 
by his own slow, laborious toil. 

The message of conciliation had come from the 
emperor that morning, and the Goths had gone wild 
with delight. " Leo has learned his lesson ! " "Now 
the emperor knows that the East Goths are not a 
weak people to be trodden down and neglected." 
The hall with its high Gothic arches had rung with 
the boasts and taunts of the nobles, and then they 
had gone on a great hunt to celebrate the occasion. 
But Theudemir had remained behind. One part of 
the message the others had passed over lightly and 
seemed to forget. The emperor would pay the friend- 
ship money which was due ; he would promise that 
henceforth an even larger sum should come regu- 
larly. But he demanded of the Goths one pledge, 
— that they would keep the faith and not send any 
more war parties across the Danube. They must 
give over to be brought up as a hostage in the Roman 
court the heir to the East Gothic throne, Theodoric, 
the eight-year-old son of Theudemir. 

It was no wonder that the king had sent the child 
away when he came to him with his happy, thoughtless 



60 BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 

prattle. To deliver this child, the pride and hope 
of the Gothic nation, over to the Romans to be 
trained by Roman teachers in Roman ways in a court 
hundreds of miles away ! To have his son the price 
of Gothic peace ! The father's heart might well be 
troubled. The Goths loved the lad, but would they 
remember, through the long years while he was grow- 
ing to manhood, that his life was forfeit if once they 
broke the peace ? One expedition of plunder into 
the forbidden territory, and Theodoric's life would be 
worth nothing at the imperial court, where murder 
and assassination were far too common for the putting 
to death of a hostage to be questioned. Moreover 
the boy must be prepared for the Gothic kingship. 
Would he not lose in the Roman life that love of 
freedom which was the safety of the Gothic nation ? 
These questions King Theudemir had been pon- 
dering all day, and in the evening, when darkness 
had fallen and the great hall was lighted only by the 
fires on the hearths, he came to his decision. He 
owed it to his people to give his royal consent and 
let the boy go. He must trust the God of the Chris- 
tians, whose faith his nation had so lately adopted, 
that Theodoric would return safely when his period 
of exile was over. Moreover his old heathen super- 
stition, in which he still half believed, gave him 



THEODORIC AS HOSTAGE 6 1 

encouragement. Theodoric had been born on a lucky 
day, the day of the last great defeat of the Huns. 
The messenger who brought Theudemir the news of 
his son's birth had carried back to the anxious house- 
hold the report of the victory which meant that the 
Goths had been delivered from their forty-year-long 
subjection to a barbarian despot, and that their prince 
was born to the kingship of a free and independent 
people. Remembering that day, could he not take it 
as a prophecy that Theodoric would go through this 
new peril unharmed, and carry further the fulfillment 
of the family name which his father and many gener- 
ations of kings before him had borne so proudly, the 
noble name of Amal, which means in the Gothic 
language "the fortunate"? 

Of the life of the boy Theodoric at Constantinople 
little is reported. That he never learned to read or 
write we know, for when he was ruler of a great em- 
pire he could not sign his own name, but had a gold 
plate with the first four letters of his name pierced 
through it, so that when he wished to sign any docu- 
ment he could place the plate upon the parchment 
and trace through the lines the first four letters of 
his name, "THEO." Whether no one took pains 
to teach the young barbarian, or whether he scorned 



62 BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 

the young Romans who knew better how to use the 
pen than the sword, we do not know. His handsome 
face and his ready wit found him a place in the 
close circle of the emperor's favorites, and his skill 
at arms and his horsemanship made him a leader 
in the drill and sports which were the occupation of 
every Roman youth. It was with regret that Em- 
peror Leo granted his request, when he was seven- 
teen years old, that he be no longer detained at the 
court, but be allowed to return to his own people and 
his father's palace, and he sent him home loaded 
with royal presents. 

King Theudemir's fears that the Roman train- 
ing would spoil the Goth in Theodoric were soon 
dispelled. The feasting and merrymaking over his 
return had hardly ended before the young prince 
was missing and with him a group of young Gothic 
nobles who had been his playmates in childhood and 
with whom he had fallen into a cordial comradeship 
on his return. The king smiled when the word of 
his son's absence was brought to him, and waited 
well pleased for the report which soon came from 
the frontier of the Gothic kingdom. A Roman army 
had just been defeated by Babai, the king of the 
Sarmatians, who had conquered and taken from 
the Romans one of their leading eastern cities, 



HIS FIRST EXPLOIT 63 

the modern Belgrade. Babai was gloating over his 
victory when the young Roman-trained barbarian 
appeared before the gates of the city with an array 
of forces which he had carried off from his father's 
army, and succeeded in wresting it from him. If 
the Emperor Leo had thought he had tamed the 
young barbarian into a submissive Roman courtier, 
he soon found he was mistaken. Theodoric did not 
hand back to the Romans the city which their army 
had just lost, but kept it for his own private rulership. 
The Goths had given Theodoric a warm welcome 
when he returned from his long exile in Constanti- 
nople. Now they took him to their hearts. In spite 
of his Roman dress and Roman ways he was no for- 
eigner. He had followed the unwritten law of the 
Gothic nobility that every young man must prove 
himself by some warlike deed, and had shown him- 
self worthy of their love and pride. With one accord 
the people declared that he and he alone should 
succeed his father as their king. 



GOTH AGAINST GOTH 

THE chief problem of a barbarian king was to 
find means to feed his people. In the century 
of the wandering of the nations the eastern prov- 
inces of the Roman Empire had been so often plun- 
dered and devastated by barbarian peoples that they 
had become barren and unfruitful. It was a heavy 
responsibility which fell on the shoulders of the 
young king Theodoric, coming to the Gothic throne 
when he was only twenty years old, and he deemed 
himself fortunate that he was able to render assist- 
ance to the new claimant to the imperial chair of 
Rome, which was left vacant in that year by the 
death of Emperor Leo. Roman favor meant Roman 
gold with which to pay his armies and buy corn and 
grain. When the new emperor, Zeno, assumed the 
purple robes, he did not forget the protection which 
Theodoric had given him when, a fugitive from his 
enemies, he had been forced to flee into Gothic 
territory, but presented to him a position and title 
which few men as young as he had held, — the office 
of Patrician and Master in Arms. Besides this he 

6 4 



ROMAN FRIENDSHIP 65 

publicly adopted him as his own personal son in 
arms. The good fortune which had begun on the 
day of his birth seemed to be continuing with the 
young king. 

No one's fortunes were secure, however, from 
one day to another in the fickle Roman court. The 
second year of Zeno's reign and Theodoric's favor 
had not closed before the other Theodoric, known 
in history as the One-eyed, who had made trouble 
for King Theudemir by obtaining the friendship of 
Emperor Leo fifteen years before, appeared at Con- 
stantinople to stir up trouble for Theudemir's son 
with the new emperor. Again he claimed that he 
was the rightful king and leader of a much larger 
nation of East Goths than that over which the boy 
Theodoric ruled. The wily Zeno was in a quandary. 
There was not money enough to pay both sets of 
Goths. Loyalty bade him stand by the son of Theu- 
demir, the prince of the house of Amal ; but Roman 
emperors cared little in those days for loyalty and 
much for power. Zeno only wanted to keep on his 
side the one who could help him most, and to leave 
as his enemy the one who could do least harm, and 
it is a rare compliment to our young Theodoric that 
he decided it was better policy to keep friendship 
with him. 



66 BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 

Theodoric the One-eyed promptly began to make 
trouble. He and his people plundered neighboring 
cities, and came southward toward Constantinople. 
Reports reached the Roman capital of large armies 
which he was gathering on the frontier. Zeno be- 
gan to repent of his decision and to wonder if he 
had done well to antagonize one who was proving 
himself so powerful a leader. He tried to make 
terms with him, offering to take him into the circle 
of allies on the same conditions which he had come 
to Constantinople to seek a few months before ; but 
this time it was the turn of the Goth to refuse. He 
would not yield until the quarrel was settled once for 
all, and Theodoric the Amal was discredited forever. 

The emperor had now no choice. There must be a 
war, but who should carry it on ? Who, he reflected, 
but the man over whom he was having all this 
trouble ? So he sent to Theodoric the Amal a press- 
ing and peremptory message, saying that the time 
had come for him to prove himself worthy of the 
honors bestowed upon him, by assisting in the war 
which was being waged against his rival. 

Theodoric had not been brought up in the midst 
of Roman intrigue for nothing. He refused to come 
into the quarrel until the emperor and senate had 
bound themselves by a solemn vow to enter into no 



GOTH AGAINST GOTH 67 

treaty with the other Gothic leader. Then, knowing 
that otherwise he would lose his important alliance 
with the Romans, and that his people would lose the 
money which meant meat and drink to them in the 
impoverished province where they lived, he proceeded 
to the war. A campaign was laid out by which his 
troops and Roman forces from two neighboring 
provinces were to arrive at the same time in the 
Balkan country where the One-eyed had stationed 
his forces. Theodoric carried out his part of the 
program and found himself, after a terrible march 
through wild mountain country, alone with his Gothic 
troops in the presence of the enemy, who were occu- 
pying an impregnable position at the top of a steep 
cliff. The Romans had failed to appear. 

There was no chance for battle. Parties of horse- 
men came down the steep paths from the heights 
and skirmished with Theodoric 's men, who attacked 
in their turn when the horsemen from the cliff had 
to come into the plains to get fodder for their horses ; 
but there could be no decisive fighting till the enemy 
were willing to come down into the valley and take 
their chances in an open battle. So it went on from 
day to day. Still the Romans did not come ; and 
each morning Theodoric the One-eyed would take 
advantage of his unassailable position and, sheltered 



68 BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 

by some rock from the arrows of the warriors in the 
valley, would stand on his hilltop and pour forth a 
storm of reproach on the young Theodoric, "that 
perjurer and enemy to the whole Gothic race," as 
he called him. 

" Silly and conceited boy ! " he would shout, and 
Theodoric was powerless to stop him or to prevent 
his people from listening, "you do not understand 
the Romans nor see through their design. They 
intend to let the Goths tear one another to pieces, 
while they sit by and watch the game at their ease, 
sure of the real victory, whichever side is defeated. 
And we the while, turning our hands against our 
brethren, are to be left an easy prey to the tricks of 
the Romans. O son of Theudemir ! which of their 
promises have they kept ? They have led you to your 
own destruction, and the penalty of your stupidity 
will fall on the people whom you have betrayed." 

Such were the words which came from the cliff 
one morning, and then the voice ceased, and Theodo- 
ric's people were left to think over what had been 
said. The next morning it would begin again. 

" Ho, Theodoric, scoundrel ! why art thou leading 
so many of my brethren to destruction ? Why hast 
thou made so many Gothic women widows ? What 
has become of all that abundance of good things 



THE VOICE FROM THE HILLTOP 69 

which filled their wagons when they first set forth 
from their homes to march under thy standard ? 
Then they owned two and three horses apiece. Now, 
without a horse they must needs limp on foot through 
Thrace, following thee as if they were thy slaves. 
Foolish boy, not long will they heed thy calls. They 
will be wiser than their king." 

Theodoric could have fought with flesh and blood, 
but against these cool and cutting taunts delivered 
by an unseen voice he was powerless, for the picture 
drawn by his rival was all too true. Roman ingenuity 
and treachery had devised this new scheme of slip- 
ping out of the war at the last moment and leaving 
the Goths to fight against and destroy each other. 
When the men and women of the Gothic camp came 
to the tent of the young king, clamoring for peace 
with their kinsmen, he had nothing to say. It was 
a bitter moment for Theodoric when he came to the 
banks of the stream to make terms with the man 
who had been the cause of his childhood exile in 
the court of Constantinople, and whose voice he had 
daily heard in reproach and insult. He went through 
his part like the king he was, and made a formal 
treaty of reconciliation and peace with his namesake, 
but he did not forget to whose treachery this humili- 
ation was due. It took ten years of Roman favors 



70 BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 

to wipe out from the memory of the proud young 
barbarian the bitterness of that hour. 

So Emperor Zeno found himself with two enemies 
instead of one, and for a time even he was baffled 
by this new turn of affairs. He went to work with 
his usual weapon of intrigue, trying to make terms 
secretly with each party of the Gothic alliance, but 
his efforts were in vain. Both sides stoutly main- 
tained that they had come at last to see reason. 
Goth would no longer fight with Goth for no quarrel 
of their own, but at the bidding of an outsider. 

Theodoric the One-eyed met the Roman ambas- 
sadors with high-flown protestations about the unity 
of the Gothic race and the evils of brothers fighting 
with one another. His only quarrel was with the 
young king Theodoric, whose army, as a matter of 
fact, he hoped to win over to his standards. Theo- 
doric the Amal met the Roman advances with a 
recital of his grievances which Emperor Zeno must 
have found it hard to answer. 

"I was willing enough," said he, "to live in peace 
and quiet in my Gothic province, beyond the Roman 
territory, giving obedience to the emperor and doing 
injury to no man. Who summoned me forth from 
this retirement and insisted on my taking the field 
against this rival Goth, Theodoric the One-eyed ? 



ROMAN TREACHERY 71 

The emperor. He promised that the Master of the 
Soldiery for Thrace should join me with an army ; 
he never came. Then that Claudius, the keeper of 
the funds, should bring me pay for my troops ; he, 
too, did not appear. Thirdly, guides who were given 
to me, instead of taking the smooth and easy roads 
which would have led me straight to the camp of my 
foe, brought me up and down all kinds of steep and 
dangerous places where, if I had been attacked, with 
all my long train of horses and wagons and my fol- 
lowing of women and children, I must without doubt 
have been destroyed. Brought at a disadvantage into 
the presence of our enemies, I was forced to make 
peace with them. Yea, in truth, I owe them great 
thanks for saving me alive, when owing to your 
treachery they might easily have wiped out me and 
my army forever." 

These personal claims and his desire for revenge 
he would nevertheless lay aside for the sake of his 
hungry people, if the emperor would assign to him 
some district for a permanent dwelling place and 
would provide rations of corn for his people until 
they could reap their own harvest. Otherwise, he 
added significantly, he could not prevent his famished 
army from supplying their needs in any way they 
could. It was a noble and kingly answer, but it 



72 BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 

did not suit the emperor, who had no intention of 
drawing so heavily on the imperial treasures if he 
could help it. 

Things began to look serious in Constantinople. 
The generals called in their troops from Greece and 
Turkey. This might be the end of Roman intrigue 
and the beginning of the great Gothic-Roman war 
which had so long been predicted. But Zeno had 
not used all his schemes. He had not yet tried 
personal bribery. To Theodoric the Amal he now 
offered large sums of gold and silver and a Roman 
damsel of the imperial family in marriage. The 
straightforward son of King Theudemir and the 
good queen Erelieva would not hear to such pro- 
posals. But the One-eyed was not so upright. He 
only waited till the offers became large enough, and 
then he forgot his horror of Goth fighting Goth, and 
agreed to turn upon his ally and drive him out of the 
country. He did not, however, succeed. For the 
next few years Theodoric the Amal proved a trouble- 
some enemy to the Romans. One unchanging need 
controlled and guided his movements. He must 
have food for his wandering peoples. So we hear 
of him now in one city, now in another, with his 
army, always victorious but never despoiling save to 
win food and shelter for his people. Other barbarian 






ROMAN FAVOR 73 

tribes tore down the treasures of art from the palaces 
and churches and stripped the buildings of all that 
made them beautiful. Theodoric had lived too long 
at the Roman court to allow such barbarities save 
when the inhabitants refused him corn and provisions. 
Then his Gothic temper came to the front, and he 
burned and pillaged without mercy. 

There was never a lasting peace between the 
Roman emperor and our Theodoric till ■ the One- 
eyed died. Then Theodoric became the undisputed 
leader of all the Goths. Thirty thousand men were 
added to his armies, and he was able to terrorize the 
whole Roman border. Zeno made haste to conclude 
a satisfactory peace with him, and we see him once 
more in Constantinople, this time as consul, giving 
his name to the year and exercising all the preroga- 
tives of that honorable office. Three years he enjoyed 
the luxuries of life at the Roman court, and to the 
Roman-bred young ruler they must have had many 
charms over the hard life as leader and provider 
for a wandering people. But Theodoric had too 
much nobility of character and too much Gothic 
blood in his veins to be satisfied as the petted 
dependent of an alien race. The call of his people 
came to him, and he responded. This is the way 
the historian tells it : 



74 



BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 



" Meanwhile Theodoric, who was bound by cove- 
nant to the empire of Zeno, hearing that his nation 
were not too well supplied with the necessaries of 
life while he was enjoying all the good things of the 
capital, and choosing rather, after the old manner 
of his race, to seek food by labor than to enjoy in 
luxurious idleness the fatness of the Roman realm 
while his people were living in hardship, made up 
his mind and spoke to the emperor." 

With the wisdom which was to make him a world- 
famous ruler, Theodoric had seen that there was no 
chance for him or his people in the crowded eastern 
provinces of the Roman Empire. Ignoring, with an 
audacity which leaves us breathless but admiring, 
the thousand miles of mountain and valley and river 
which lay between, he announced to the Roman 
emperor that he would like to go over with his people 
into Italy, and requested that he and his people be 
given that kingdom to hold "as a gift and under 
his imperial protection." Both parties seem to have 
ignored the fact that Italy was held by a barbarian 
people and ruled over by Odoacer, a Goth who had 
lost favor with his people by becoming, in his young 
manhood, a courtier of the hated Attila. The emperor 
had little friendship for these barbarian occupants 
of Italy, although they were nominally under his 



THE MARCH OF A NATION 75 

control ; but he could not give any real help to 
Theodoric, who must win the land by hard fighting. 
He went through the form of granting Theodoric 's 
request, and with many expressions of regret allowed 
the Goths to go. But we must think that he was 
more willing to spare them than he admitted, and 
that he was glad to get so powerful and difficult a 
"son in arms" safely out of his way in the distant 
land of Italy. 

So Theodoric started with his nation army of 
more than two hundred thousand Goths on the long, 
hard journey over into Italy. " Since Moses led the 
Children of Israel out of Egypt and through the 
wilderness," says the chronicler, !' so great a migra- 
tion had not been undertaken." Putting into the 
wagons the women and children and as much furni- 
ture as they could take, the men set out on the great 
highway that followed the course of the Danube 
River, but their way did not lie for many miles over 
smooth roadways. There is a story of a great swamp 
to which they came. Enemies pressed upon them 
before and behind, and there was no chance to turn 
aside. The Gothic vanguard drove their horses into 
the swamp. Many sank in the treacherous waters, 
and those who came safely across were falling before 



j6 BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 

the lances which their foes on the other side were 
hurling against the reed-woven breastplates of the 
Goths. Then Theodoric shouted : " Whoso will fight 
the enemy let him follow me. Look not to any 
other leader, but only charge where you see my 
standards advancing. The Gepids shall know that 
a king attacks them ; my people shall know that 
Theodoric saves them." 

Cool and watchful in the moment of peril, he had 
seen in the apparently trackless swamp a narrow way 
which he believed to be solid ground. Urging his 
horse to a gallop he dashed across it, and his people 
followed his lead. " As a swollen river through the 
harvest field, as a lion through the herd," so did 
Theodoric charge upon the enemy, and they fell 
back in terror before him. The victory was doubly 
important because in their flight the enemy left their 
wagons of provisions behind them, and the Goths 
were delivered from famine for another stage of 
their journey. 

No other leader could have planned such a march, 
and no people less hardy and courageous could have 
carried it through. Queen Erelieva and the Gothic 
women suffered untold miseries in the wild moun- 
tain passes, where the cold was so intense that the 
yellow locks of the chiefs were whitened with frost, 




77 



j8 BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 

and the icicles hung from their beards. But the day 
came when the pastures were green again and the 
rich lowlands of Italy lay before the eyes of the 
weary company. On the plains of Verona Theodoric 
met Odoacer, the soldier-general who then ruled Italy. 

As Theodoric was donning his armor, buckling 
on his breastplate of steel and hanging his sword by 
his side, his mother Erelieva and his sister Amalfrida 
came to the royal tent. 

" Bring forth, O my mother and sister, my most 
splendid robes, those on which your fingers have 
worked the most gorgeous embroidery," he said to 
them. " I would be more gayly dressed on this day 
than on a holiday. Mother, to-day it behooves me 
to show to the world that it was indeed a man child 
whom you bore on that great day of the victory over 
the Huns. I too, in the play of lances, have to show 
myself worthy of my ancestor's renown by winning 
new victories of my own. Before my mind's eye stands 
my father, the mighty Theudemir, he who never 
doubted of victory, and therefore never failed of it. 
Clothe me therefore in rich apparel for this great day. 
If the enemy do not recognize me, as I intend they 
shall, by the violence of my onset, let them know 
me by the brilliancy of my raiment. If fortune give 
my throat to the sword of my enemy, let them at least 



THE GOTHIC CIVILIZER 



79 



say, ' How splendid he looks in death,' if they have 
not had the chance to admire me fighting." 

With such brave and confident words Theodoric 
cheered his mother and sister, and then went forth 
to fight for the land which he had come a thousand 
miles to conquer. His good fortune did not desert 
him, and though it took more than one battle to win 
so great a land, yet within five years he was the 
conqueror and acknowledged ruler of all Italy. 

Another barbarian approaching Rome, but this 
time with a new purpose, — not to destroy but to build 
up ! It has been said that until they met the Teu- 
tonic peoples the Romans had been able to Romanize 
every nation with which they came in contact, but 
that the Goths succeeded in Teutonizing Roman 
institutions. It was this which Theodoric was to do 
in Italy. With his Gothic inheritance and his Roman 
training he took up the work, which the Romans had 
been forced by weakness to lay down, of ruling the 
barbarian nations of Europe. By an administration 
in which Gothic strength was tempered with Roman 
wisdom he earned the title of "The Gothic Civilizer." 



CLOVIS, KING OF THE FRANKS 



[ONQUEROR and civilizer, 
Theodoric sat on his Italian 
throne, and for the first 
time since Alaric and his 
barbarians crossed the Alps 
the land had rest. "He was 
an illustrious man and full of 
good will towards all," says 
the chronicler. "He reigned 
thirty-three years, and so great 
was the happiness attained by 
Italy that even the wayfarers 
were at peace. For he did 
nothing wrong. Thus did he 
govern the two nations, the Goths and Romans, as if 
they were one people. So great was the order which 
he maintained that, if any one wished to leave gold 
or silver on his land, it was deemed as safe as if 
within a walled city. An indication of this was the 
fact that throughout all Italy he never made gates for 
any city, and the gates that were in the cities were 
not closed. Any one who had any business to transact 

So 




A TIME OF PEACE 8 1 

did it at any hour of the night as securely as in the 
day. He was a lover of manufactures and a great 
restorer of cities." 

Nor was it only Italy that prospered. Merchants 
came flocking from all the countries round about to 
carry on their trade under his protection, and neigh- 
boring peoples desired to have a share in this won- 
derful peace and prosperity, or, as the quaint record 
reads, ' ( Thus he so charmed the neighboring nations 
that they came under a league with him, hoping that 
he would be their king." That Theodoric did every- 
thing in his power to strengthen the friendship 
between his people and the Teutonic nations with 
which he was surrounded, and to maintain the peace 
of Europe, is shown by the system of marriages 
which he arranged. His sister Amalfrida he gave 
in marriage to the king of the Vandals, who ruled 
in Carthage and northern Africa, his two daughters 
were the wives of the kings of the West Gothic 
and Burgundian peoples, and he himself married the 
sister of that greatest barbarian of them all, Clovis, 
the king of the Franks. 

The Franks were a new branch of the Teutonic 
peoples and had come but lately within the pale of 
civilization. They lived in the northwesternmost 
corner of Europe, in the land to which they have 



82 BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 

since given their name, and came first into the great 
family of barbarian nations on that day when all 
Europe united to drive back the terrible Attila and 
his Huns. They were not even united under one 
king until the days of Clovis, who came to the chief- 
tainship in 481, eight years before Theodoric came 
over into Italy. Clovis was but fifteen or sixteen 
years old when he became king, but he went speedily 
to war with all his neighbors and succeeded in so 
extending his territory that the statesmanlike Theo- 
doric thought him sufficiently powerful to be included 
in his system of family alliances, and sought and 
obtained in marriage Audefelda, the sister of the 
Frankish lord. 

Clovis was a shrewd as well as a savage and brutal 
king. He looked upon the great alliance of Teu- 
tonic nations which Theodoric was building up, and 
decided that it would be a help to him to have 
a Christian wife of royal family. To this end he 
selected Clotilda, niece of the king of the Burgun- 
dians, whose own family had all been put to death 
by her uncle Gundobad, that he might seize the 
throne. 

Clotilda was living in partial exile at Geneva. 
The story is that Clovis knew that Gundobad would 
never allow him to see her, and he therefore sent a 



AN OFFER OF MARRIAGE 83 

Roman who was at his court, by name Aurelian, to 
try to see the lady. Aurelian went alone to Geneva, 
clothed in rags and with a wallet on his back like a 
beggar, but carrying with him the ring of Clovis to 
show his true purpose. Clotilda, who was famous 
for her piety and charity, received the wandering 
pilgrim kindly, and herself brought water to wash 
his feet that she might show her humility before 
this holy man of her faith. As she knelt before 
him Aurelian gave his message. 

" Lady," he whispered, " I have great matters to 
announce to thee if thou wilt deign to listen to me 
in secret." 

" Say on," replied Clotilda, consenting. 
" Clovis, king of the Franks, hath sent me to 
thee ; if it be thy will, he would fain raise thee to 
his high rank by marriage ; and that thou mayest be 
assured of his purpose, he sendeth thee this ring." 
Clotilda accepted the ring with pleasure, and said 
to Aurelian : "Take for the recompense of thy pains 
as messenger these hundred sous in gold and this 
ring of mine. Return promptly to thy lord, and 
tell him that if he would fain unite me to him by 
marriage, let him send without delay messengers 
to demand me of my uncle Gundobad, and let the 
messengers who shall come, take me away in all 



84 BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 

haste, so soon as they shall have obtained permission, 
for my uncle and his counselors, my enemies, would 
fain prevent such a marriage by craft and deceit, but 
they will not dare to openly oppose your lord." 

Clovis was glad at the message and sent an embassy 
who did even as Clotilda had said. Gundobad dared 
not refuse the powerful Frank, and gave Clotilda 
over to the envoys, who took her promptly to the 
king. "Clovis," the chronicler adds, "was trans- 
ported with joy at the sight of her, and married her 
at once." So Clovis took his first step out of bar- 
barianism, and it was due to the influence of Clotilda 
that he made his next great move. 

Night and day the queen had pleaded with her 
heathen husband that he would come into the Chris- 
tian faith, for she was an ardent believer. But he 
would not. Her one God had never, he declared, 
been proved any stronger if as strong as his many 
gods, and wherefore should he change ? 

Meanwhile a son was born to them, and the queen 
presented him for baptism. She had the church 
adorned with tapestry, seeking to attract her husband 
by the splendor of the ceremony. But the child died 
in his white baptismal robe. Then Clovis reproached 
her bitterly, saying : " If the child had been conse- 
crated in the name of my gods he would be alive 



CLOVIS IN TROUBLE 85 

still. But now because he is baptized in the name 
of your God, he cannot live." 

Clotilda unceasingly urged the king to acknowledge 
the true God, but he could not be won over. Five 
years went by, and Clovis's power grew ever greater 
and greater till he ruled from the ocean to the 
western bank of the river Rhine, and there he came 
upon a nation from the north, equally barbarous and 
equally strong in battle. He had thought to cross 
over easily into the fertile land which they held, and 
dispossess them of it. But they crossed over instead 
to meet him and surprised his troops and drew them 
into battle before they were ready. For once the 
Frankish king had met his match, and it seemed 
as if he was to be defeated. 

Then in the midst of the battle, when all was 
going against him, Clovis bethought him of the God 
of Clotilda, who she had declared had all power. 
Right on the battle field, while the fighting went on 
about him, he stopped, and raising his arms to heaven 
cried out loudly : 

" O Jesus Christ, whom Clotilda declares to be 
the Son of the living God, who art said to give vic- 
tory to those who put their hope in thee, I beseech 
the glory of thine aid. I have called on my gods, 
and have proved that they are far from me and have 




86 



THE BARBARIAN BECOME CHRISTIAN &>] 

no power to help me. Now will I test that power 
which thy people say they have proved concerning 
thee. If thou wilt grant me the victory over these 
enemies, I will believe on thee and be baptized in 
thy name." 

The tide of battle turned, and the enemy began to 
flee before the Franks. Their king was killed, and 
when they saw that they were without a leader they 
submitted to Clovis, saying : " We wish that no 
more people should perish. Now we are thine." 
Then Clovis forbade further war, and after praising 
his soldiers he returned to the queen and told her 
how he had won the victory. 

At the Christmas festival Clovis, who had mean- 
time been instructed in the principles of the Christian 
faith, received baptism in the church of Rheims. 
The story of the coming of the royal convert is 
written thus in the records of the church : 

" Preparations had been made along the road from 
the palace to the baptistery ; curtains and valuable 
stuffs had been hung ; the houses on either side of 
the street had been decorated ; the baptistery had 
been sprinkled with balm and all manner of perfume. 
The procession moved from the palace ; the clergy 
led the way with the holy book, the cross, and the 
standards, singing hymns and spiritual songs ; then 



88 



BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 



came the bishop, leading the king by the hand ; 
after him, the queen ; lastly the people. On the road 
it is said that the king asked the bishop if the land 
through which he passed was the kingdom promised 
him. 'No,' answered the prelate, 'but it is the 
entrance to the road that leads to it.' ' 

Even at the moment of submission the barbarian 
king had evidently dreams of earthly conquest. But 
at the font of baptism he was to receive his rebuke. 




" Bow thy head in humility, Barbarian ! " cried the 
bishop. " Henceforth adore what thou hast burned, 
and burn what thou hast adored." 

The king's two sisters and three thousand men 
of the Frankish army, besides many women and 
children, received baptism on that day, and from 
that time the Franks were reckoned a Christian 
nation. 



THE BARBARIAN HUMBLED 89 

Clovis had bowed his head to the word of the 
Church. He was to meet another power before which 
he must pause. In the course of his wars he dealt 
cruelly with a people who, driven from their homes, 
sought protection and received it from Theodoric in 
Italy. Clovis prepared to pursue them and wipe 
them off the earth in his fierce anger, but Theodoric 
wrote him a letter, of which the tone is more one 
of command than of advice, warning him not to 
come farther. No one else on earth could have said 
to the fierce Frankish king, " Thus far shalt thou 
come and no farther," and been obeyed. But Clovis 
turned from his march and went back to his own 
domain. 

For a time Clovis did not encroach on the Gothic 
territory. Then his ambition led him to his undoing. 
He could not rest in the thought that Theodoric had 
commanded him and he had turned back, and he 
provoked a war with his nearest Gothic neighbor, the 
son-in-law of the great king. Once more Theodoric 
warned him, but this time he did not heed, and there 
followed a war in which Theodoric himself after his 
long years of peace was forced to join, and in which 
Clovis was defeated and forced to give up part of 
the lands which he had won by conquest, and make 
a lasting peace with Theodoric. 



QO BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 

Our last picture of Clovis is a strange one. 
Returning to Paris, humiliated no doubt by the 
thought that while he could hold his own wide 
kingdom he could not harm Theodoric, he set up 
his government there and, longing for recognition of 
his power, entered into negotiations with the far-off 
Roman emperor at Constantinople. It is a sign of 
the wonderful hold which Rome had gained in the 
past over the minds of the barbarians that now, when 
she was but a name, they sought her titles. Theodoric, 
who had made the world forget his barbarian origin 
by his noble work as civilizer and peacemaker, still 
refrained from adopting the title, to which he had a 
right, of " Emperor of the Western World," out of 
respect to a Roman emperor hundreds of miles away. 
And Clovis, the most barbarian of the Teutonic 
rulers, as Theodoric was the most noble, was pleased 
as a child when the Roman emperor sent him 
the tunic of purple and the diadem which signi- 
fied that he was a Roman consul. Putting them on, 
Clovis mounted his horse, and calling his people 
together that they might see him he rode in his 
purple garment from one end of Paris to the other, 
scattering with his own hand gold and silver coins 
among his subjects in response to their admiring 
cries of " Clovis Consul ! " " Clovis Augustus ! " 



THREE TITLES 9 1 

Three titles the ambitious barbarian had won for 
himself in the forty-five years of his life. He had 
been crowned " King of the Franks," and in that 
name was written the story of his success as a 
warrior. To be " King of the Franks" when Clovis 
was chosen chief of his tribe at the age of sixteen 
would have meant to be lord over all the other 
Frankish chieftains and tribes, as well as head of his 
own. The father of Clovis would have doubted if 
any one man could gain such power. But that would 
have been to rule only a small part of the region 
west, of the Rhine. To be "King of the Franks" 
when Clovis died was to rule the Roman and the 
Teutonic peoples who dwelt in the lands from the 
Rhine to the Pyrenees. This Frankish empire which 
Clovis had founded was soon to lead all Christendom. 
At his baptism Clovis had been greeted as " Eldest 
Son and Supporter of the Church," a title which 
was to lead his successors into crusades against the 
whole Mohammedan world. Now, at the end of his 
life, he received the empty honors of the dying 
Roman Empire, and it was over these that he and 
his people went wild with delight. 



RODERICK AND THE SARACENS. 

LEGEND tells us that there was in the heart of 
^ Spain a palace, built within a cave in the olden 
days of magic and mystery, wherein was hid the 
fate of the Gothic kingdom in Spain, and that it 
was because Roderick penetrated its secrets that he 
was the last king of the Goths. 

An ancient prophecy had foretold, so the story 
ran, that barbarians would one day cross over from 
Africa and conquer the fair land of Spain. A wise 
old king heard this prophetic word and determined 
to use the powers of magic, in which he was well 
versed, to set this evil day as far along as possible. 
For this purpose he built within the great cave a 
palace with many windings and turnings, and cast 
over it a spell. In the innermost room he placed a 
secret talisman, and by the powers of magic he 
brought it to pass that as long as this talisman 
remained undisturbed and none knew its secret, so 
long Spain should be safe from invasion. He could 
not prevent the prophecy from coming true some 
time, for so it had been decreed by the Fates ; but 

because of his wisdom and his great love for his 

92 



THE MAGIC PALACE 93 

land it was given to him to set this check upon the 
coming of that terrible day. 

A strong iron gate barred the entrance to the palace, 
and upon this the king put a huge lock. In the cen- 
turies which followed, every king of Spain came upon 
the day of his accession to the throne and added a 
lock, until the door was covered with fastenings. 

Thirty-two padlocks, most of them rusty with age, 
hung from the gate when Roderick came to the 
throne. It was two hundred years since the death 
of Theodoric, and the Goths had lost in that time 
their former glory and supremacy in Europe. The 
Teutonic kingdom which Theodoric had tried to 
build up had fallen to pieces when his strong leader- 
ship was gone. Only in Spain did the Goths retain 
their power, and in that luxurious southern land, with 
its vineyards and its palaces, they had gradually lost 
the strength and simplicity which they had brought 
from the north, and had become a weak and sinful 
people. Kings had vied with their nobles in oppress- 
ing the common people and making the court a place 
of wickedness. The last monarch had been deposed 
for his tyranny ; and his cousin Roderick had seized 
the throne by force but with the support of the 
people, who saw in him bravery and daring, and 
thought they discerned wisdom and sagacity as well. 



94 BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 

The day came when Roderick should add his lock 
to the collection on the gateway, but the story spread 
through the startled kingdom that the new king had 
declared his intention of opening the gate instead. 
Perhaps the story of the reason for the locked door 
had been forgotten in the centuries ; perhaps the fatal 
curiosity and reckless daring of Roderick would not 
have been held back even by the ancient tale of the 
evil which would befall his realm when the secret was 
known. The pleasure-loving Goth met the protests of 
his counselors with a laugh and a shrug of the shoulders. 

"It is no talisman, but a treasure house," he said 
to them. "The old king was a miser who desired 
to keep his wealth from others, and so he made this 
clever story of a spell and magic, and his ruse has 
succeeded with a credulous people all these centuries. 
Gold and silver and jewels lie hidden in its moldy 
depths. My coffers are empty, and I should be a 
fool to let a cluster of rusty locks keep me from 
filling them from this ancient storehouse." 

The fear of the mystery was so heavy on the wise 
men of the kingdom that they offered to raise the 
needed money for Roderick, if he would refrain from 
disturbing the palace. Then Roderick showed that 
he was a true Goth. Gold had tempted him greatly, 
but these words set the seal on his purpose. 



THE ANCIENT SPELL 95 

" Now I will surely go," he said ; "it shall never 
be said that Don Rodrigo, king of the Goths, was 
halted by fear ! " 

The ancient locks were filed and torn from the 
gate ; the rusty hinges were forced to yield ; and 
the king, bearing a torch in his hand, passed through 
the creaking portals and, followed by his train, en- 
tered the cave palace. The dust of centuries lay 
upon the rooms, but as the king strode through one 
chamber after another he found no gold nor hidden 
treasure. He had almost thrown off the feeling of 
dread with which, in spite of his bold words, the en- 
trance into the century-old cavern had inspired him, 
when he came to the last room of all, where the fatal 
secret was reported to be shut away. 

Roderick glanced curiously about this inner shrine 
to see wherein lay the terrible magic. Before him 
was a marble urn containing a parchment scroll, 
and on the wall opposite the door was a rude paint- 
ing, drawn on the plastered wall and so brightly 
colored that even the dust of centuries could not 
wholly dim the gay reds and yellows and greens. 
The picture represented a group of strangely dressed 
horsemen. The steeds upon which they sat were of 
Arabian breed, small and well formed. Some of the 
warriors, for such their lances and pennons showed 



96 BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 

them to be, wore turbans ; others were bareheaded, 
with locks of coarse black hair hanging over their 
foreheads. All were dressed in skins and presented 
a strange and warlike appearance. 

Puzzled over the meaning of this rude picture 
Roderick turned to the scroll and read these words : 
" Unfortunate king, it is an evil hour in which 
thou hast come. Whenever this room is entered and 
this scroll read, the people shown in yonder picture 
shall invade the land and overturn the throne of its 
kings. The rule of the Goth shall end, and the 
land and the people shall be degraded by barbarian 
invaders." 

Roderick had read the ancient inscription slowly, 
spelling out aloud the dim old lettering as he de- 
ciphered it. As he finished, the long-silent passages 
gave back the echo, so that the courtiers, who had 
drawn back in fear when their king entered the 
magic room, heard it repeated, and the sound of it 
came with an unearthly force to Roderick : " The 
rule of the Goth shall end, — the land and the 
people be degraded by barbarian invaders." 

Then King Roderick looked back at the picture, 
and his eyes were opened to see its meaning. The 
peoples who had looked strange yet familiar were 
the Arabs (the turban-wearers) and the Moors (the 



THE COMING OF THE SARACENS 



97 



black-haired warriors) who had conquered all Africa 
and were already gazing longingly across the Straits 
of Gibraltar into the sunny provinces of Spain. He 
had broken the spell, and now they would come over. 
The rash king fled through the empty passages, — 
his courtiers had already disappeared, — and escaped 
into the open air where they were waiting in terror. 
That night an earthquake destroyed the cave palace. 

It was a simple magic when it came to the light. 
The power of fear, which the old king by his words 
had held away from them for so long, came upon 
the king and all the people. They had sinned, and 
their hour had come. There was no hope for them. 
They were doomed. So Roderick felt in his heart 
when within a year the hordes of Arabs and Moors 
— Saracens the people of Europe called them — 
came over into Spain. 

" The Hun," a wise writer has said, " was a more 
terrible foe than the Saracen. But the Goth con- 
quered him in a generation, almost in a day, when 
he came to meet him face to face. Against the 
Mohammedan peoples, the barbaric races of Arabs 
and Moors, the Teuton had to fight for five hun- 
dred years." 

The Goth was the first member of the Teutonic 
family of nations to meet the Saracen, but whereas 



98 BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 

in the days of Attila, the Goth had been the noblest 
of the peoples, now he was the weakest, and he 
went down in defeat before the Eastern races which 
swarmed into his land. 

A traitor Goth gave the Saracens the opportunity 
to come over into Spain at a time when King Rod- 
erick was quelling a disturbance in the north, and 
they had landed in great numbers and established 
themselves in his kingdom before he could reach the 
south. In the state of a Gothic king he had traveled 
from the north, riding in a chariot of ivory lined 
with cloth of gold, drawn by three white mules. 
Pearls, rubies, and other jewels sparkled from the 
rich silken awning, and the king, when he rode on 
the battle field of Guadelete, where the two armies 
were drawn up, was clad in a robe of silk inter- 
woven with strings of pearls, and wore upon his head 
a crown of gold. Only his yellow hair and his blue 
eyes would have reminded one that he was of the 
race of the old barbarian kings who had sent terror 
into Europe from the north even as the Saracens 
were bringing it from the far south. 

It was not personal vanity which made Roderick 
approach in this splendor ; it was the custom of 
Spanish kings, and the people took new courage as 
he rode on his throne of ivory through the ranks and 



THE BATTLE OF GUADELETE 99 

reminded them of the glory of their Gothic ances- 
tors and of the holy Christian faith which they were 
defending. When the battle began, the king did not 
sit idle in his chariot. He laid aside his crown and, 
donning his helmet adorned with horns of gold after 
the old Gothic custom, mounted his milk-white war 
horse Orelia and took his place in the forefront of 
the battle. As he came in sight of the heathen host 
it is said that he exclaimed, " By the faith of the 
Messiah, those are the very men whom I saw painted 
on the walls of the chamber of the palace." 

If fear entered Roderick's heart at the sight of the 
pictured barbarians on the palace wall, it did not 
govern him when he met them face to face in battle. 
In the three days during which the conflict raged 
he was everywhere in the fiercest of the fight, en- 
couraging and leading his men. At first the victory 
seemed to be with the Christians. Then the tide of 
success turned and the attacks of the Moslems beat 
the Goths back, back, back toward the mountains. 
Here and there resistance would be attempted and 
the line would be broken for a moment, but soon 
the forces would be cut down and scattered, and the 
steady, relentless pressure would go on. King Rod- 
erick was thrown from his fleet steed Orelia and 
wandered defenseless on the field till at last he threw 



IOO BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 

aside his purple mantle and his embroidered sandals, 
by which he would be recognized by the enemy as 
king, and among the very last followed the example of 
the survivors of the Gothic army and fled from the 
field. A picture of the defeated king wandering about 
after the battle has been preserved in an old ballad, 
dear to the hearts of Spaniards, and to those who 
know it in English by Mr. Lockhart's translation. 

The hosts of Don Rodrigo were scattered in dismay, 
When lost was the eighth battle, nor heart nor hope had they ; 
He, when he saw that field was lost, and all his hope was flown, 
He turned him from his flying host, and took his way alone. 

His horse was bleeding, blind, and lame, — he could no farther go; 
Dismounted, without path or aim, the king stepped to and fro ; 
It was a sight of pity to look on Roderick, 
For, sore athirst and hungry, he staggered, faint and sick. 

All stained and strewed with dust and blood, like to some 

smoldering brand 
Plucked from the flame, Rodrigo showed : — his sword was in 

his hand, 
But it was hacked into a saw of dark and purple tint ; 
His jeweled mail had many a flaw, his helmet many a dint. 

He climbed unto a hilltop, the highest he could see, 
Thence all about of that wide rout his last long look took he ; 
He saw his royal banners, where they lay drenched and torn, 
He heard the cry of victory, the Arab's shout of scorn. 



"TO-DAY NO KING AM I" IOI 

He looked for the brave captains that led the hosts of Spain, 
But all were fled except the dead, and who could count the 

slain ? 
Where'er his eye could wander, all bloody was the plain, 
And, while thus he said, the tears he shed run down his 

cheeks like rain : — 

" Last night I was the King of Spain, — to-day no king am I ; 
Last night fair castles held my train,— to-night where shall I lie ? 
Last night a hundred pages did serve me on the knee, — 
To-night not one I call mine own : — not one pertains to me. 

" Oh, luckless, luckless was the hour, and cursed was the day, 
When I was born to have the power of this great signiory ! 
Unhappy me, that I should see the sun go down to-night ! 
O Death, why now so slow art thou, why fearest thou to 
smite ? 

Neither Goth nor Moslem ever knew the fate of 
the unhappy king, whose defeat at Guadelete ended 
three centuries of Gothic rule in Spain and ushered 
in eight centuries of Saracen dominion. One story 
is that he found his way to a monastery and there 
did penance for his sins until the death he longed 
for delivered him. Those who tell this tale say that 
in a hermitage in Spain there was found two hun- 
dred years later a tomb with the simple inscription, 
" Here lies Roderick, last king of the Goths." 



CHARLEMAGNE 




HRISTENDOM would have 
fared ill if it had had in the 
eighth century no stronger 
defender than Roderick and 
the weakened Goths, for it 
was pressed on every side by 
heathen and barbaric peoples. 
There had been indeed no 
united Christendom since the 
death of Theodoric two hun- 
dred years before. The union 
of Christian nations, into which the barbarian Clovis 
had been the last king to be admitted, had fallen 
to pieces at Theodoric's death, and no man had 
been strong enough to unite the warring tribes and 
nations of the Teutonic and Roman races until 
there succeeded to the throne of Clovis the Frank- 
ish Charles, known in history as Charlemagne, or 
Charles the Great. 

Charlemagne was the hero of Europe for all the 
Middle Ages. Even the Saxons, who had every 
reason to hate him as their conqueror, wrote on the 



THE MAN OF IRON 103 

pages of history, " The best man on earth and the 
bravest was Charles : truth and good faith he estab- 
lished and kept." In the hour when they trembled 
before his "fierce fury" the barbarian nations ad- 
mired the Frankish king. But how they feared him ! 
There is a story of Didier, a Lombard king who 
opposed him and was driven by his armies within 
the walls of the strongest city of the Lombards. 

Didier had never seen the Frankish king, but 
Otger his friend had been at his court. When they 
heard that the formidable Charles was approaching, 
the two went up to a high tower to spy him from 
afar. 

When the baggage train appeared, followed by the 
engines of war with which to attack the city, Didier 
said to Otger, " Is Charles in that great host ? " 

" No," replied Otger, " Charles is not yet there." 

Then Didier saw a host of common soldiery com- 
ing, and spoke confidently, "Of a truth Charles 
advances now in this throng." 

" No, no," replied Otger, " not yet." 

The king fretted himself and cried, ' ' What then 
shall we do if he has more than these ? " 

" The manner of his coming you will see," replied 
Otger, solemnly, " but what shall become of us I 
know not." For Otger was afraid ; well he knew the 



104 BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 

wealth and might of the peerless Charles. " When 
you see the plain bristle with a harvest of spears, and 
rivers of black iron come flowing in upon your city 
walls, then you may look for the coming of Charles." 

While yet he spoke, as the chronicler tells it, a 
black cloud arose in the west and the glorious day- 
light was turned to darkness. The emperor came 
on ; a dawn of spears darker than night rose on the 
besieged city. King Charles, that man of iron, ap- 
peared. Iron his helmet, iron his gauntlet, iron the 
corselet on his breast and shoulders. His left hand 
grasped an iron lance. Iron the spirit, iron the hue 
of his war steed. Before, behind, and at his side 
rode men arrayed in the same guise. Iron filled the 
plain and open spaces ; iron points flashed back the 
sunlight. 

"There is the man whom you would see," said 
Otger to the king. 

Charlemagne is described as " large and strong, 
and of lofty stature, though not over-tall. His eyes 
were very large and animated, his nose long, his hair 
fair, and his face laughing and merry. His appear- 
ance was always stately and dignified, whether he 
was standing or sitting." 

" Charlemagne used to wear," the chronicler con- 
tinues, ' ' the national, that is to say the Frankish, 




CHARLEMAGNE 



io 5 



106 BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 

dress, — next his skin a linen shirt and linen 
breeches, and above these a tunic fringed with silk ; 
while hose covered his lower limbs, and shoes his 
feet, and he protected his chest in winter by a close- 
fitting coat of otter or marten skins. Over all he 
flung a blue cloak, and he always had a sword girt 
about him, usually one with a gold or silver hilt and 
belt ; he sometimes carried a jeweled sword, but 
only on great feast days. On these he made use of 
embroidered clothes, and shoes bedecked with precious 
stones ; his cloak was fastened by a golden buckle, 
and he appeared crowned with a diadem of gold and 
gems ; but on other days his dress varied little from 
the common dress of the people. Above all things 
he despised foreign costumes, however handsome." 
This is the portrait, as it has come down to us 
by pen and picture, of the great ruler who came 
in the year 800 to the gates of Rome, the first 
Teuton to receive the title " Emperor of Rome," 
— the man who stands in history halfway between 
the ancient world and the modern, the central 
figure of the Middle Ages. The barbarian of one 
age had become the noble of the next. The Pope 
of the Christian Church received him at the gates 
of the city, for had he not restored and extended 
the ancient bounds of Christendom ? He had 



"EMPEROR OF ROME" 107 

found Christendom smaller than in the days of 
Theodoric, much smaller than the extent of the 
Roman Empire. Spain had been lost since the three 
days' battle of Guadelete ; Slavic peoples held the 
eastern lands which Theodoric and his Goths had for- 
saken to come over into Italy ; and beyond the Rhine 
border heathen Saxons had occupied the northern 
regions which Goths had held in the days of Drusus 
and Athanaric. In twenty-five years of conquest 
Charlemagne had driven back the Saracens, who 
had been looking with longing over the mountains 
into the fertile plains of France. Only at fearful 
cost had they been checked. Roland and Oliver and 
the flower of the Frankish army had fallen on that 
terrible day at Roncesvalles, celebrated in song and 
story, but they had not died in vain if they had held 
back the stream of Moslem warriors from Christen- 
dom. The Saxons had been conquered and brought 
to Christianity ; their heathen king Wittekind had 
received baptism in the presence of Charlemagne on 
Frankish soil ; the Slavic peoples had been driven 
back and subdued ; and now in a realm where peace 
and prosperity reigned, the great warrior had laid 
down his arms and come to Rome to receive the 
title which had been handed down by the proudest 
people on earth for many centuries. 



108 BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 

On Christmas Day the Franks and Romans went 
to the great church of St. Peter's to worship. It must 
have been an impressive scene, — the huge building 
but dimly lighted with candles, save for the altar, 
where three thousand candles made a great triumphal 
arch ; the Pope and his attendants in the rich robes 
of their office conducting the stately Christmas serv- 
ice j Charlemagne and his sons kneeling before the 
altar, a little apart from the crowd. Then when the 
service was over, as the king rose from his knees, 
the Pope suddenly came forward with a great crown 
of gold, which he set upon his head. Instantly the 
huge assembly responded with the shout : " Long 
life to Charles the Augustus, the mighty Charles, 
crowned of God, the great and pacific Emperor of 
the Romans," and the Pope and all the people gave 
him homage. 



THE SCHOOL OF THE PALACE 

THINK of a school where all the pupils were 
of royal blood, and where an emperor, three 
princes, heirs to the thrones of Europe, two arch- 
bishops, a queen, three young princesses, and two or 
three courtiers of various ranks all sat down and 
studied lessons together. That was Charlemagne's 
School of the Palace, a school of more than a 
thousand years ago, which traveled about with him 
wherever he went. 

The barbarian invasions had destroyed the schools 
of Rome, and since then there had been hardly any 
schools in all Europe, save those for the few boys 
who lived in the monasteries. The four centuries 
had been so full of warfare and bloodshed and con- 
quest that scholarship and the arts of peace had al- 
most disappeared from Europe. People have called 
those times the " Dark Ages," because the light of 
learning seemed to have been blotted out. But Charle- 
magne was determined that his subjects should not 
remain barbarians. So he set up the first free public 
schools in Europe and made a decree, which was 
published in the farthest corners of his realm, that 
109 



IIO BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 

every boy, whether rich or poor, son of a serf or of 
a freeman, should be allowed to go to them. But 
the most interesting of all and the most famous was 
his own School of the Palace. 

If we had come to the court during a session, I 
doubt if we would have known that it was a school 
at all. In the first place we should look for books, 
but there would be hardly any books, for this was 
long before the invention of printing, and the few 
books which were written had to be laboriously 
copied letter by letter and sentence by sentence by 
practiced scribes. So books were very rare and very 
precious. There would be no writing paper like 
ours, but scrolls of heavy parchment, on which the 
learned scholars might write with quill pens, and 
wax tablets and steel points with which beginners 
might practice the forming of letters. 

Charlemagne could never learn to write. He be- 
gan too late in life, and, though he used to keep 
blanks and tablets under his pillow in bed that he 
might practice when he was wakeful, his hand was 
too familiar with the mighty sword Joyeuse to use 
skillfully so tiny a weapon as a pen. But in all 
else that was taught in the school he was the best 
student of all, and his sons and his daughters had 
hard work to keep up with him. 



1 1 2 BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 

With so few books to study, everything depended 
on the teacher, who had to give out what should be 
learned, and Charlemagne sent across the channel 
to Britain and persuaded the great English scholar, 
Alcuin, to come over and be master of the Palace 
School. Alcuin had to get permission of the English 
king, for he was a very famous scholar, and learning 
was greatly prized in England ; but he came and 
taught Charlemagne and his court for fourteen years, 
and this is the way he taught them. He would make 
up a series of questions and answers, and the pupils 
would ask the questions and he give the answers 
until they knew them thoroughly. Sometimes the 
scholars would think up their own questions ; and 
Alcuin tells us that he used to rise before daybreak 
and study out answers to some of the emperor's per- 
plexing questions, for there was no subject in heaven 
or earth about which Charlemagne did not have a 
passionate curiosity. 

The names of some of the studies which were 
taught are like ours, — grammar, arithmetic, physi- 
ology, and astronomy, — but to us the lessons 
seem very queer. Here are some of the questions 
in the dialogue exercise which Alcuin gave to his 
sixteen-year-old pupil, Pepin, Charlemagne's son. It 
began with physiology. Pepin was to ask, " What 



PEPIN'S LESSON 113 

is the mouth ? " and Alcuin would answer, " The 
nourisher of the body, because all food comes in 
through it." " What is the stomach ? " would be the 
next question, and the answer would be, " The cook 
of the food." " What is the head ? " " The preserver 
of memory." "And the eyes ? " the boy was to ask, 
" what are they ? " " The eyes, my son, are the 
guides of the body, the organs of light, the index 
of the soul." The hands, Alcuin taught, were the 
workmen of the body, the bones were the strength of 
the body, and the limbs were the columns of the body. 
Twenty-six questions and answers like this would be 
all that Prince Pepin would ever be required to know 
about physiology, and then Alcuin would turn to 
another subject, perhaps to arithmetic, where he 
would teach, among other things, that man was 
placed between six walls, the names of which were 
" above, below, before, behind, right and left." 

Some of the answers in this exercise were very 
pretty and poetical. Spring was called "the painter 
of the earth " because it brought so many fresh colors 
to the barren fields and trees and hill slopes, and 
autumn was "the barn of the year" because the 
earth brought forth at that time her rich harvests, 
which must be stored up to preserve life through 
the long, unfruitful winter. When Pepin inquired of 



114 BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 

his master what snow was, he was told "dry water," 
and frost was described to him as " a persecutor of 
plants and a destroyer of leaves." The sun dis- 
tributed the hours of the day, the moon was thought 
to dispense the dew and give warning of storms, 
while the stars were " the pictures of the roof of 
the heavens, the guides of sailors, the ornament 
of night." 

To us they seem strange lessons taught at a 
very queer school, where old men and children sat 
down together and puzzled over the wonderful world 
in which they lived, trying to understand and explain 
it. But remember that this and other schools like it 
were the beginning out of which all our schools have 
grown, and that if Charlemagne had cared only for 
war and conquest and destruction, as did Attila the 
Hun, the world would have remained barbarian for 
a great many years longer than it did. 



VIKINGS FROM THE NORTH 

WHEN Emperor Charlemagne was an old man, 
nearing the end of his life, he came, so the 
story goes, to the Frankish seaport town of Nar- 
bonne." As he sat at meat in the hall, he looked out 
and saw white sails on the horizon. The towns- 
people watched the ships as they came nearer, and 
commented on their strange appearance. Some 
thought that they were Jewish merchants, some that 
they hailed from African ports, and others that they 
came from Britain. But the wise king, knowing from 
the shape and swiftness of the vessels what sort of 
crews they carried, said to those about him, " These 
ships bear no merchandise, but cruel foes." 

The Franks marveled at his words and prepared 
to defend their city should the strangers attack it. 
But there was no need. The Northmen, hearing 
that there stood the man whom they were wont to 
call Charles the Great, were afraid lest all their fleet 
should be taken in the port and broken to pieces. 
Their flight was so rapid that they <( soon withdrew 
themselves not only from the swords but even from 
the eyes of those who wished to take them." The 
"5 



Il6 BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 

Franks rejoiced at their speedy departure, congratu- 
lating themselves that the danger was so soon 
overpast. But the wise Charles, seized by a deep fore- 
boding, rose from his seat at the table and looked 
out of the window toward the east. Long he re- 
mained in that position, and those who watched him 
saw tears in his eyes. No one ventured to question 
the venerable emperor, but turning to his followers 
he said : " Know ye why I weep ? Truly I fear not 
that these will injure me. But I am deeply grieved that 
in my lifetime they should have been so near landing 
on these shores, and I am overwhelmed with sorrow 
as I look forward and see what woes they will bring 
upon my posterity and their people." 

Thus the great emperor, who had reorganized the 
whole Christian world and driven back barbarians 
without number, saw in his old age the beginning of 
the great Viking invasions, which were to change the 
face of northern Europe and the British Isles. 

Men of the south had always since the days of 
the Romans looked upon the far north as a region 
of mystery. Drusus had won great fame by being 
the first Roman captain who had ventured to set sail 
on that dread Northern Ocean, of which a Roman 
historian had written : " Beyond Germania lies the 
Northern Ocean, and in it lies an island rich in arms 



THE MYSTERY OF THE NORTH 1 1 7 

and ships and men. Beyond that is another sea, which 
we may believe girdles and encloses the whole world. 
For here the light of the setting sun lingers on till 
sunrise, bright enough to dim the light of the stars. 
More than that, it is asserted that the sound of his 
rising is to be heard, and the forms of the gods, and 
the glory round his head may be seen. Only thus 
far, and here rumor seems truth, does the world 
extend." 

What happened in these far northern regions the 
men of heathendom did not venture to say. Perhaps 
the souls of the dead dwelt there, and these boatmen 
who appeared from time to time rowed the souls of 
those who were departing this life across to the 
better land of the sunrise and the sunset whence 
none might return. It was all mystery to the super- 
stitious Teuton, and those who came forth from the 
north were therefore invested with a strange terror. 

The dragon ships which appeared in their peace- 
ful harbors did not make the men of Christendom 
less fearful. On the curved prow of every Viking 
ship was the head of a dragon or worm or other fan- 
tastic creature, and in the vessel were tall, blue-eyed 
barbarians with terrible two-handed axes, which they 
wielded with fearful force and dexterity. Swiftly and 
silently a fleet of such vessels would enter a French 



Il8 BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 

port, or sail up the mouth of a wide river, and pro- 
ceed inland, stopping at every rich farm to seize 
produce, plundering the cities for treasure, attacking 
the merchantmen which lay along the wharves ; 
and then, before a force could be summoned to beat 
them off, they would be gone, and none knew whether 
it would be a year or a month or a generation before 
they would come again. Only, as the ninth century 
went on, it became certain that they would come 
oftener and oftener, till the forebodings of Charle- 
magne were realized and the terrified and helpless 
people inserted in the ritual of their church a new 
petition, " From the Northmen's fury, O Lord, 
deliver us." 

There came an hour when the Franks believed 
that no human power could have saved them, and 
gave thanks that their prayer had been answered. 
The Northmen, or Vikings as they were called, for 
the word "Viking" had come to mean sea robber, 
made their way up the Seine River to Rouen. Then, 
having taken that city and made their progress thus 
far unchecked, they sailed farther up the river into 
'this inland realm, with its walled cities and tilled 
fields, which was as strange to these foreigners from 
the bleak Northland as their mountain islands would 
have been to the Franks. On and on they sailed, a 




VIKINGS SAILING UP THE RIVER TO PARIS 



n 9 



120 BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 

fleet of one hundred and twenty dragon ships, till for 
the first time Vikings and Viking boats lay under the 
walls of Paris. That was as strange an hour in history 
as that day, more than four hundred years before, 
when Alaric and his barbarians stood before the city 
of Rome ; and not the least strange part of it was 
that in the great family of races these Northmen and 
the Goths of that former day were kindred peoples. 

Ragnar, the Viking leader, stood at the prow of the 
foremost ship and gazed with wonder and fierce long- 
ing at the turrets and towers of the fair Frankish city. 
Then he landed, and his men after him, — the crews of 
one hundred and twenty ships, — and rushed through 
the gates. They took the people of Paris wholly un- 
awares, for no one had dreamed that the northern 
pirates would ever come so far inland. Up and down 
the streets the wild bands of Northmen went, slaying 
those who came in their way, till the people fled in 
terror to their homes, leaving their city in the hands 
of the barbarians. 

For a few hours the Vikings pursued their work 
of destruction, unchecked save by groups of brave 
men who withstood them here and there in the city. 
They robbed the palaces and public buildings of 
their treasures, and set fire to each before they 
left it. They had no respect even for the churches, 



THE RAID OF RAGNAR 12 I 

but entered them and tore down pillars of marble 
and precious stone and stripped the altars of their 
gold and silver vessels. But while the marauders 
were in the church of St. Germain a thick fog fell 
upon the city. To the religious Parisians it seemed 
that " God blinded the heathen by the darkness of 
their own wickedness," and in the Viking accounts 
of this (t Raid of Ragnar " we read that on this 
voyage the ships went too far inland and " came 
into a strange region of mists and enchantments." 

The Vikings came out from their plundering to 
find the face of Paris changed. A thick gray mist 
shut everything from their view. Before they had 
gone a dozen steps, the church from which they had 
come was hidden from them. They could not tell 
which way the street turned, but blundered about 
in the narrow ways. In their haste for treasure and 
slaughter none had noticed carefully where they were 
going, and now a cry of panic arose in the gloom 
when they realized that they did not know which way 
the ships lay. They lost each other, and many were 
killed in the fights in the darkness when no one 
could tell which was Frank and which was Northman. 
Those who found their way back to the ships waited 
as long as they dared for the others, but at last terror 
seized them lest they should never be able to escape 



122 BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 

to the broad ocean. In a panic they drew up their 
anchors, and setting their black sails and pulling on 
their oars besides, they departed with all haste down 
the river Seine. 

When they came into their own waters, the Vikings 
had thought they could shake off forever the spell of 
that evil day in Paris. But they found, so the story 
goes, that the enchantment followed them. The 
fog had been a sickness-breeding mist, one of those 
warm mists, blown up from the river lowlands, which 
were more terrible than the sword to the mountain 
dwellers of the north. The sickness pursued them 
to their own land, and there many died ; until the 
heart of Ragnar was smitten with fear, and he went 
to the king and confessed to him that he had robbed 
the churches and had brought back many Christian 
prisoners, and that he feared the God of the Chris- 
tians was sending this sickness as a punishment. The 
king hearkened unto Ragnar's word and returned all 
the Christian prisoners to the Franks, and with them 
a wondrous porphyry pillar (which Ragnar had 
wrenched from the church of St. Germain, where 
the fog fell upon him) and a host of silver vessels. 
"When this offering had been made," the legend 
reads, " the God of the Franks was satisfied, and 
our men recovered of their sickness." 



ALFRED AND THE DANES 

EUROPE was not the only realm to be caught in 
the flood of the Northmen's invasions. " This 
year," reads the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle of 787, 
" first came three ships of the Northmen out of Nor- 
way. These were the first ships of Danish men that 
sought Angle-land." Across the waters into Britain 
where the Angles and Saxons had dwelt for four 
hundred years, and where they were beginning to 
build up a peaceful and united and civilized order of 
national life, came the fierce northern invaders in 
their black dragon ships. Invasions Britain had seen 
before. The Romans, the Picts and Scots, and the 
Saxons had all in their turn seized the kingdom 
by force. But such an invasion as this Britain had 
never suffered, for there was no end to it. To con- 
quer in one battle was of no avail, for the enemy 
would shortly invade some other spot with a larger 
fleet and a stronger force, till it seemed to the weary 
Saxons that all the barbarians in the world were 
come to their shores. 

At first the Northmen came only to harry and 
plunder the land, and returned after their summer 
123 



124 BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 

raids to their own land with their spoil. Henry of 
Huntington gives a graphic picture of the distress and 
perplexity of the kings and nobles during these sum- 
mer raids. " Wonder was it," he writes, " how when 
the English kings were hasting to meet the Danes 
in the East, ere they could come up with their bands 
a breathless scout would run in, saying, ' Sir King, 
whither marchest thou ? The heathen have landed 
in the South, a countless fleet. Towns and hamlets 
are in flames ; fire and slaughter are on every side.' 
Yea, and that very day another would come running : 
' Sir King, why withdrawest thou ? A fearsome host 
has come to shore in the West. If ye face them not 
speedily, they will hold that ye flee, and will be on 
your rear with fire and sword.' Again on the mor- 
row would dash up yet another, saying : ' What 
place make ye for, noble chieftains ? In the North 
the Danes have made a raid. Already have they 
burnt your dwellings. Even now they are sweeping 
off your goods, dishonoring your wives, and haling 
them to captivity.' " 

It was no wonder that the king and the people 
(< lost heart and strength both of mind and body, and 
were utterly cast down "; nor that it seemed to the 
young Alfred, brought to the throne of the West 
Saxons at the age of twenty-two because the Danes 



THE DANISH HOST 1 25 

had killed his brother the king in battle, that " never 
might he, all alone, with but God for aid, endure so 
grievous a stress and strain of heathendom." 

Alfred had to face a greater peril even than the 
fierce but brief summer raids, for the Danes had be- 
gun twenty years before his accession to the throne 
to winter in England. At first Northmen who came 
to Britain had been only Vikings, sea robbers out 
for spoil, who cared nothing for land and conquest ; 
but in these later years the Danes had come and had 
begun to bring their wives and children and goods 
and settle in the provinces which they spoiled. 

One month only the young king Alfred was allowed 
to reign in peace, he who cared more than any king 
of England before him for learning and arts, and de- 
sired nothing so much as to rule a quiet, peaceful 
land. Then he was attacked by the Danes, and was 
forced to defend his kingdom against them lest soon 
he have no kingdom at all, for the Danes " thought 
it scorn that any part of England should yet be 
Alfred's." Nine battles he fought against the heathen 
in the first year of his reign, to say nothing of num- 
berless raids which he and his captains made with 
small companies of men, and for the time being the 
invaders were held back. But by the seventh year of 
his kingship they had conquered and occupied all the 



126 BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 

land from the Thames northward. In Northumbria 
and East Anglia and in Mercia and around London 
barbarian kings reigned. Alfred alone of all the 
kings of the provinces of Britain remained supreme 
in his own realm. In more than two thirds of 
England the Danes held sway. 

Alfred had fought the Danes successfully both on 
land and on the water, but in the year 878, in mid- 
winter, when no campaigns had been fought before, 
Guthrum and two other kings of the Danes with a 
mighty force " stole away to Chippenham, and over- 
ran all the land of the West Saxons, and sat them 
down there. With wondrous swarms newly come in 
from Denmark the barbarian kings spread over the 
land, covering the face of the earth like locusts, and 
taking all for themselves, for none could withstand 
them. Many of the folk drave they oversea, and, of 
the rest, they brought under the most, and forced them 
to yield to their sway," — Had the story ended here, 
as it did in the tale of the conquest of every other 
province in Britain, all history would have been 
changed. Danes instead of Anglo-Saxons would 
have ruled the British Isles, and instead of Angle- 
land, or England, we should to-day have Daneland. 
But that was not the end of the story. " Many of 
the folk drave they oversea, and, of the rest, they 



ALFRED IN HIDING 1 27 

brought under the most, and forced them to yield to 
their sway, save only King Alfred. He, with a 
small band, gat him away to the woods, and that 
hardly, and to the fastnesses of the fens!' 

A fugitive and in peril of his life, Alfred sought 
a place where he might dwell in hiding within his 
own realm. For a time he wandered with his men 
in the woods of Somerset, and then he came to a 
region of salt marshes, in the midst of which lay an 
island called Athelney, or Isle of Nobles. "Athel- 
ney," says the chronicler, " was girded in by fen on 
all sides, so that by boat only could it be come at. On 
this islet was there a thicket of alders, full of stags 
and goats and other such creatures, and in the midst 
a bit of open ground, scarce two acres. Hither in 
his distress came Alfred all alone," and hither fol- 
lowed him Ethelnot, one of his nobles, and a few 
of his faithful followers. 

Englishmen have always looked back with pride on 
that dark hour in English history, when England's 
only hope was in this young king, living a home- 
less and dangerous life on the tiny island, in the 
midst of his foes, for as they think of those months 
of suffering and discouragement they see the true 
greatness of Alfred. When every one else was dis- 
heartened he was brave and strong and hopeful. 



128 BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 

Many stories have been handed down to us of the 
things which befell Alfred in those three months in 
hiding, and though we know they are probably not 
true history like the dates and names of battles, yet 
they give us a picture of how people thought and 
felt and acted in Alfred's day, and how he perhaps 
may have thought and felt and acted. First, there is 
the story of the cakes, — of Alfred's coming to a hut 
one day and being recognized by the master of the 
house, a goatherd, who did not tell his wife who it 
was who came to their house for food and shelter. 
The story is that the old woman left Alfred to mind 
the cakes on the hearth, and when he let them burn 
she rated him soundly for his carelessness, and 
Alfred, king of England though he was, took his 
scolding meekly, for he knew he deserved it. None 
can doubt that many times in those sad months 
Alfred must have gone hungry, for the little group 
of nobles had nothing to live on but what they 
could get by hunting or fishing, and very likely he 
came more than once to the home of some of his 
humble subjects and was fed by them, unbeknown 
to themselves ; and that is how this story grew up. 

Again there is a tale of how Alfred ventured 
forth, disguised as a minstrel, with one trusty serv- 
ant, and went to the Danish camp. That he was a 




ALFRED IN THE DANISH CAMP 



129 



130 BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 

very good minstrel we may be sure, for he loved the 
Saxon songs of his fathers and learned many of them 
by heart and had them written down. First he played 
to the soldiers in their camps, and then because he 
played and sang so well they led him to the tent of 
the Danish king, Guthrum. Little did the blue-eyed 
Norse barbarian dream that he should so soon meet 
the handsome and skillful minstrel in another and 
more terrible guise. Guthrum was so charmed with 
the music and the songs of Alfred that he desired 
him to stay ; and the story is that Alfred found great 
difficulty in getting away from the Danish camp, not 
because he was in danger, but because he had won 
such a place by the charm of his bearing and by his 
talents that they would not let him go. But the Eng- 
lish king had learned all which he needed to know 
of the Danes and their strength and position, and 
he returned as soon as possible to his people. 

This story puts Alfred's return to the war immedi- 
ately after his visit to the Danish camp ; but there is 
yet another tale which is written in the books of the 
Church, telling how, when he felt himself most for- 
saken, Cuthbert, one of the saints of England, ap- 
peared to him and gave him cheer. The people felt 
that without the help of God England could never 
have been saved in this dark hour, and they loved to 



ALFRED'S VISION 131 

tell this tale, which some say they heard from the 
lips of Alfred himself, "how one night the king 
could not sleep, but lay pondering on all that had 
come to pass. And presently he saw a great light 
which shone upon his bed brighter than the beams 
of the sun. In the midst of this light he saw the 
form of an old man, who blessed the king. Then 
Alfred said unto him, ' Who art thou ? ' 

" And he answered : ' Alfred, my son, rejoice ; for 
I am called Cuthbert, the soldier of God, and I am 
come to tell thee what thou must do to win back the 
kingdom from which thou hast been banished. Now 
therefore be strong and courageous and of joyful 
heart, and I will thee what thou must do. Rise up 
early in the morning, and blow thine horn thrice, 
that thine enemies may hear it and fear. Then about 
the ninth hour of the day five hundred of your loyal 
followers shall come to your help. And by this sign 
thou shalt know that after seven days an army of all 
your folk shall be gathered unto you. Thus shalt 
thou fight the enemy, and doubt not that thou shalt 
gain the victory.' " 

History tells us that Alfred was not long left de- 
serted on his island. While he was waiting there, 
making occasional raids till the power of winter was 
broken, word came that in Devon the Danes had met 



132 BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 

a terrible defeat and had lost the banner of the Raven, 
which they believed brought them victory and could 
never be taken. "So in the seventh week after 
Easter," reads the chronicle, "rode Alfred to Eg- 
bert's Stone, and there met him all the whole folk 
of Somersetshire and Wiltshire and all the folk of 
Hampshire, such as had not, through fear of the 
Heathen, sailed beyond seas. And when they saw 
the King, they were filled with joy untold, and they 
hailed him as one alive again from the dead. So 
came he, the third day after, with a mighty host, to 
the place called Ethandune ; whereat, hard by, he 
found no less mighty forces of the Heathen, drawn 
up in one dense mass for battle. With the first 
bright rays of the rising sun did the King alike and 
all the flower of his folk beclothe themselves in their 
war gear. . . . All the long day did the two nations 
fight ; and far off might you hear the shouting and 
the crash of arms. Stoutly and long they kept at it, 
and in the end Alfred got the victory. 

" Then the remnant of the foe came to Alfred 
and cried ever aloud, for sorrow of heart, and for 
bitter hunger, and for cold, and for mighty dread. 
Mercy do they implore, mercy, mercy and peace — 
they who had ever been enemies unto peace, of 
direst mood. Sureties they proffer ; trothplight they 



GUTHRUM'S BAPTISM 133 

would swear. The King should name and take from 
them such sureties as he would, giving them none in 
return. Never before had they made a peace with 
any one after this sort." 

So the Danes were humbled as they had never 
been humbled before, and Alfred in the kindness of 
his heart showed the mercy which they besought of 
him. Alfred's wisdom and greatness never showed 
forth more plainly than in the famous treaty which 
he made with the Danes at this time, the treaty of 
Wedmore, as it is called, from the name of the place 
where the English and the Danish kings met. 

Besides the sureties which had been given by the 
Danes, it had been agreed that Guthrum the Danish 
king should become a Christian and receive bap- 
tism without delay. Seven weeks after the victory 
Guthrum came with thirty of his best nobles, and 
they presented themselves to Alfred for baptism, 
and donned with solemn ceremonies the white robes 
which they must wear for the first seven days of 
their Christian life. Alfred was to stand as godfather 
to his former enemy Guthrum, giving to him the 
English name of Athelstan. According to the cus- 
tom King Guthrum wore the white robe, and on the 
eighth day it was taken off or " loosed " by Ethelnot, 
the noble who had shared Alfred's exile. 












AELFREDUS 

MAGNUS 











J 34 



THE PEACE OF WEDMORE 135 

The Danish leader remained twelve days with 
Alfred, and they made a peace which began after 
this wise : " This is the peace that King Alfred and 
King Guthrum, and the Wise Men of all the English 
nation, and all the people that are in East Anglia, 
have all ordained and with oaths confirmed, for them- 
selves and their descendants, as well for born as for 
unborn." Bounds, it went on, were to be established 
between Alfred's territory and that over which Guth- 
rum was still to hold sway with Alfred as his over- 
lord, and all the necessary laws were made by which 
the Danes and the English could carry on trade and 
community relations. Best of all, neither nationality 
was to regard the other as a conquered people, but 
both were to be equal before the law. 

Thus Alfred in his wisdom recognized that the 
Danes were never to be driven wholly from the island, 
but that the English must receive them as neighbors 
and treat with them in fairness and justice. And in 
token of the relation which should be maintained by all 
men of each nationality, he took Guthrum, the bar- 
barian king, to be his own godson ; and Guthrum 
kept his part of the peace until he died, as did 
Alfred. Peace had not come to Alfred for all time. 
He was forced to fight the Danes again and again dur- 
ing his reign before a final peace was established ; but 



136 BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 

in this treaty comes the beginning of our united Eng- 
land. Soon " all England turned to him," we read, 
" and of their own free will did many Franks, Gauls, 
Danes, Britons, Scots, and Angles, bow them to his 
sway, highborn and lowborn alike ; and all of them, 
in his own worthy wise, did he rule and love and 
honor, even as his own folk," for although the saying 
was "amid arms laws are still," yet " amid all the 
clash of weapons " was Alfred a lawgiver, and never 
ceased in his tendance on the helm of his kingdom. 
When you read of Alfred's greatness in other 
lines, — as a poet, as the founder of a navy, and as 
a king, — remember this story of his dealings with 
the Danes, and think of him as England's defender, 
the first man to be king of a united England, and 
the wise ruler who was great enough to make the 
barbarian invaders his neighbors and allies instead 
of his foes. 



ROLLO THE VIKING 

ROLLO, or Rolf the Walker his companions 
. called him, for he was so large and tall that 
he could not ride on the little Norwegian ponies 
which scrambled up and down the steep mountain 
paths, but always walked wherever he wished to go. 
He was a splendid Norse .hero, such as the poets 
loved to describe in their sagas, tall, broad-shouldered, 
with yellow hair, and " fiercely blue " eyes, which 
could command the roughest sea robber and bring 
him to his will. And he was a typical Northman, 
too, in his restlessness and love of adventure. His 
father was Jarl Roegnwald, a chieftain highly hon- 
ored by the king of Norway, but the narrow limits of 
the group of islands over which his father ruled 
were too close for him, even as his father's horses 
were too small. The wild blood ran too swiftly in 
his young veins for him to be content at home ; and 
after the fashion of young Norse nobles he built him 
a ship, and gathering a company of men, betook him- 
self to the wide sea where he might wander wher- 
ever he pleased. There was no harm in that, for the 
calling of sea rover, which meant as well sea robber, 
i37 



138 BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 

was an honorable one among the Northmen ; but the 
king of Norway, Harald Haarfager, had made a law 
that while the sea-roving nobles of his realm might 
plunder every other land, and might rob any other 
peoples, they should never exercise their right of 
Strandhug or appropriation on their fellow country- 
men. So when Rollo, voyaging home from a long 
cruise in the Baltic Sea, where he had been very short 
of food, landed on the island of Vigen and plundered 
a Norwegian village, Harald, who happened to be stay- 
ing near by, was very angry, and caused a court of 
justice to be assembled to banish Rollo from Norway. 
Hilldur, the mother of Rollo, went as soon as she 
heard this to the king to intercede for her son, but 
Harald was inflexible. Though Rollo was indeed the 
son of his most trusted chieftain and dearest friend, 
and though there were none that the king held in 
greater esteem than Jarl Roegnwald and the lady 
Hilldur, nevertheless his son must be punished for 
his lawlessness. Finding her prayers ineffectual, Hill- 
dur departed from the king, chanting mournfully as 
she went the song written about another Norse hero : 

You then expel my dearest son (named after my father !) 

The lion whom you exile, 

Is the bold progeny of a noble race. 

Why, O King, are you thus violent ? 



THE VISION OF ROLLO 139 

But the king could not be moved from his pur- 
pose, and Rollo sailed away from Norway, an outlaw, 
in the boat which was become his only home. 

We hear of Rollo presently in the Hebrides, off 
the coast of Scotland, where a company of Northmen 
had settled who became his willing allies, and again 
we read in the chronicles of England how in the 
early years of Alfred's reign " Rollo and his gang" 
landed in Britain, " and started to harry the land." 
Then in one of the intervals of rest from Danish 
attack comes the welcome entry, " In this year 
Rollo and his mates made their way over into Nor- 
mandy." Alfred had made peace with them, and 
Rollo, ever restless and longing for adventure, had 
led his men over into France. 

History tells us that Rollo left England because 
Alfred had defeated him in battle, but legend has 
another tale of his going, which I have copied from 
an old, old book, where it is headed " The Vision 
of Rollo." 

"At night, as Rollo slept, there seemed that a 
swarm of bees flew quickly over him and his host, 
and hummed off southward, and flew over the mid- 
sea, and so came to land. And there drew they 
together, and settled on the leaves of divers trees, 
and in short time, filled they all that land, and began 



140 BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 

to bring together unto one place flowrets of many a 
hue. Here woke Rollo, and thought on that dream, 
and the interpretation thereof. And when he had 
diligently considered the thing, he guessed that he 
might find rest from his toil in those parts where the 
bees had settled. So crossed he the sea, and put to 
shore in Normandy." 

" Rest from his toil " would have seemed to the 
terrified Franks the last thing which Rollo or any 
of his Viking band wanted. The Charles who ruled 
that portion of the empire of Charlemagne — whose 
great union of the countries of Europe had fallen to 
pieces in the hands of his weaker sons — was called 
by his subjects Charles the Simple or Charles the 
Fool, by which we may guess that he was not wise 
or strong enough to manage his own people, much 
less to drive out a great company of Northmen such 
as came in the mighty fleet of Rollo and his allies. 
He was far away inland when the Northmen, or 
Norsemen, as the name came to be pronounced, 
came up the Seine and made their camp at a town 
five leagues from Rouen, and the terrified people did 
not know to whom to turn. But a bold archbishop, 
by the name of Francon, taking his life in his hands, 
went over into the Norsemen's camp, and came be- 
fore the terrible Rollo, of whose wild exploits he had 



"REST FROM HIS TOIL" 141 

heard for twenty-five years, and proposed that he and 
the barbarian leader make a treaty concerning the 
safety of the city of Rouen. 

It took a brave man to enter the barbarian camp 
with such a proposition, the more as Francon knew 
that the emperor Charles was far away and the walls 
of Rouen were so broken down by the previous 
Norse invasions that the city was hardly defensible. 
But Rollo was a leader who admired a brave man, 
whether friend or foe, though the archbishop could 
not know that. Moreover we begin to see here for 
the first time in Rollo's life that perhaps he was 
more than a splendid barbarian. Perhaps after all the 
Norse sea king, now for twenty or thirty years a rover, 
did desire " rest from his toil " and a home where 
he might dwell with his people. At all events he 
made a treaty with the archbishop of Rouen that if 
his people might have possession of the city and 
might occupy it without opposition from the inhabit- 
ants, they would neither plunder nor kill nor harm 
in any fashion the city or its people. 

The citizens of Rouen did not know what to make 
of this message which the archbishop brought back. 
They did not have much faith in the promise, but 
they were helpless, so it mattered little what they did. 
It was with many misgivings that they threw open 



142 BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 

their gates and gave over their keys, but the barbari- 
ans kept their word, and no man of Rouen suffered 
from their entry into the city. 

Outside the gates of Rouen the Norsemen built a 
huge camp, and hither came Charles with all the 
Franks he could muster to fight them. To tell the 
tale of the battles between the Franks and the Norse- 
men were a weary matter. Other Vikings came and 
joined Rollo, and other leaders became his allies. 
One of these was Siegfried, who came so near to 
taking Paris in the famous thirteen months' siege of 
the year 885, but was at last driven back by the 
noble count Odo in command of the Franks. Mean- 
while Rollo, who could never be content to have 
taken one city, led his men here and there in the 
western part of France, taking one city after another, 
and behold ! the conquered people found that this 
terrible Rollo of whom they had heard such tales 
was not the barbarian of their fancy, but a strong 
ruler, who in spite of his rude ways treated them 
fairly and was better able to preserve order in the 
land than their absent emperor, whose overlordship 
had not kept the Frankish nobles from constant 
strife among themselves. 

Year by year the Norsemen gained more power, 
until, some eight or ten years later, Rollo made plans 



THE NORSEMEN IN FRANCE 143 

for an extensive conquest of the kingdom. All the 
Norsemen in France were to unite and move in 
three great armies up the three rivers of France, 
the Seine, the Loire, and the Garonne, ravaging 
and taking possession as they went. 

Charles the Simple was filled with panic at this 
plan of invasion. He had met Rollo before, and he 
remembered well the answer which Rollo had given 
one of his messengers who asked the Norse chieftain, 
" For what end have you come to France ? " 

"To drive out the people who are here, or make 
them our subjects, and to gain for ourselves a new 
country," Rollo had answered. 

" Will you submit to King Charles ? " the ambas- 
sador had asked. 

"No. We yield to none," had been the proud 
reply. "All that we take by our strength and our 
arms we will keep as our right." 

Charles had not forgotten that defiant message 
which had come to him soon after Rollo's first 
coming to France. Now he wrote to Archbishop 
Francon, who had dealt with Rollo at Rouen, entreat- 
ing him to solicit from Rollo, in whose province at 
Rouen he still dwelt, a truce of three months. 

" My kingdom is laid waste," wrote the alarmed 
monarch, " my subjects are destroyed or driven into 



144 BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 

exile ; the fields are no longer plowed or sown. 
Tell the Northman that I am well disposed to make 
a lasting peace with him, and that if he will become 
a Christian, I will give him broad lands and rich 
presents." 

Rollo consented readily to this proposal, and the 
truce was strictly observed by both sides ; but at the 
end of the three months the Franks resumed hos- 
tilities without notifying the Northman that they con- 
sidered the truce to be at an end. This Rollo re- 
garded as an act of bad faith, to which he promptly 
responded by renewing his invasions with even greater 
violence. The fair valleys of France were for many 
months the scene of bloodshed and slaughter, and 
the people of the land despaired of ever seeing pros- 
perity again, even as the people of England had lost 
heart before the coming of Alfred. A great council 
or parliament of barons and nobles and bishops came 
together to entreat Charles the Simple to take pity 
upon the land. 

" Look upon the sufferings of your people," they 
said to him. t( Their life is become altogether 
wretched. The land is desolated and brings forth 
no more crops, for of what use is it to sow seed 
when bands of Norsemen will shortly trample down 
the growing harvest, or if perchance the wheat should 



THE OFFER OF THE KING 145 

come to its growth, they will reap it before the very 
eyes of the starving people. The vineyards have 
been laid waste, the vines broken down, the peas- 
antry wander hither and thither through the land in 
search of food, and because of the unsettled state of 
the country the highways are infested with robbers 
and murderers, and neither pilgrim nor merchant 
dares to travel on the highways." 

They did not tell him so in words, but Charles 
could not help seeing that the people blamed him 
for the state of affairs, and said among themselves, 
" All this comes because we have a weak king, who 
will neither meet the enemy in battle nor make nor 
keep a wise peace with him, but leaves us at his 
mercy." What they needed was a king like Alfred 
who had delivered England from just such a state 
of misery. 

Either King Charles was wiser than he had 
seemed, or else he had farseeing counselors whose 
suggestions he followed, for he roused himself and 
did the wisest thing which could have been done. 
He sent Archbishop Francon to Rollo, offering him 
the province of Neustria and the hand of his daugh- 
ter, the beautiful young Gisela, in marriage, provided 
he would become a Christian and live in peace with 
the Franks. The nobles had by this time come to 



146 BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 

see that in Rollo they had a chieftain of very different 
temper from the wild sea robbers who came into the 
land for naught but treasure and slaughter. Perhaps 
Rainier, the count of Hainaut, had the ear of the 
king, and told him how he had been taken prisoner 
by the Norseman, and how his wife Alberade, the 
countess Brabant, had gone to Rollo, requesting her 
husband's release and offering to set free twelve 
captains of the Vikings, who had been taken by her 
men in the battle, in exchange for Count Rainier, 
and to give up as well all the gold which she pos- 
sessed. She would have counted herself fortunate to 
save her husband, even though it left them impover- 
ished and destitute, but Rollo had restored to the 
countess not only her husband but half the gold 
which she offered. At all events the king made 
known to Rollo his willingness to give him a province 
of his realm, and Rollo accepted the offer, objecting 
only to the lands offered to him, which he considered 
too much devastated by war. 

At the little village of Saint-Clair King Charles and 
Rollo met, even as Alfred and Guthrum had met in 
England. The Franks pitched their tents on one side 
of the river, and the Norsemen on the other. After 
much bargaining it was settled that Rollo should have 
a great province, of which Rouen was the center, in the 



THE OATH OF ALLEGIANCE 147 

north of France, and he came across the river where 
the counts and bishops and nobles and lords were 
assembled to witness the ceremony of receiving the 
Norseman into the kingdom. 

Rollo had to take an oath of allegiance to Charles 
as his overlord, making himself one of the emperor's 
crOwn vassals, and this he consented to do, putting 
his hands between the king's hands in token of 
homage for the province and saying, " From this 
time forward I am your vassal, and I give my oath 
that I will faithfully protect your life, your limbs, 
and your royal honor." 

Then the king and all the nobles and abbots and 
dukes, and the great crown vassals, repeated a like 
oath, confirming the cession of land made to Rollo. 
They swore that they would protect Rollo in his life, 
his limbs, and his folk, and his honor ; and would 
guarantee to him the possession of the land, to 
him and his descendants forever. After this Rollo 
was declared the duke of his province, and the wan- 
dering outlaw of Norway was a rightful landholder 
once more. 

There is an old story, which may or may not be 
true, that when the terms had all been agreed 
upon, the Frankish nobles told Rollo that for so great 
a gift as this he was bound to kiss the king's foot. 



148 BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 

"Never," quoth Rollo, "will I bend the knee to 
any, and I will kiss the feet of none." 

When the Franks pressed the point, he ordered 
one of his followers to come forward and take his 
place. The man stepped forward. No Norseman 
would dispute a command from Rollo. But he did 
not relish the duty, and he did not intend to bend 
the knee any more than his master. Instead, there- 
fore, of stooping before the king, he took the king's 
foot in his hand and raised it to his mouth, lifting 
it so high that the poor old monarch fell over back- 
ward, amid shouts of laughter from the throng. 
The barbarian was not all gone from the North- 
man yet. 

At Rouen Rollo received baptism from the hands 
of his Prankish associate and neighbor, Archbishop 
Francon, and wore, as King Guthrum had done in 
England, the white robe of the Church for seven 
days. It must have been a strange sight to see the 
old Norse sea king stalking about in the long white 
garment. Rich presents were given on both sides, 
and many of his followers were baptized at the same 
time. Those who refused to come into the new 
settlement received presents of arms, money, and 
horses, and went whither they would, beyond the 
seas, to return to their native land or to pursue their 



THE GOLD BRACELETS 149 

life of adventure. Then Rollo was married by Chris- 
tian ceremonies to the lady Gisela, and went to his 
province, which soon came to be known as the duchy 
of Normandy, while the men who dwelt there and 
their descendants were known as Normans, which 
was easier to say than Northman or Norseman. 

Normandy was in a sad state when Rollo became 
duke ; but he ruled wisely and well, so ordering the 
affairs of his duchy that he was honored of all men. 
The laws which he gave out were fair, and he was 
careful to have them justly administered. The farm- 
ers and tillers of the land he protected with great 
diligence, and the land became rich and prosperous. 
Robbers and murderers were dealt with so severely 
that they ceased to frequent that duchy. The pretty 
story is told of the safety of the kingdom which is 
told of the realms of Alfred and other wise kings 
also, and which shows how happy and serene the 
people were under their ruler. 

When Duke Rollo was hunting one day, he and 
his company came to a fair glade, where they sat 
down to rest and refresh themselves. As they 
feasted together Rollo said that he would prove the 
honesty of his people and the security of his duchy. 
So he took off two gold bracelets and hung them on 
a tree close by ; and though the tree was beside the 



150 BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 

highway, yet when the duke went many weeks later 
to seek them, they hung there still. 

It is a beautiful page of history, — this tale of the 
Northman become Norman, — and it does not end 
with Rollo and his men. They could not wholly throw 
off the effects of their wild lives of conquest and strife. 
But their descendants, keeping the strength and 
vigor of their Viking ancestors, took on the culture 
of the Franks, forming a race which became the 
conquerors and leaders of Europe, the foremost 
champions of her religion and her civilization and 
her arts. It was Rollo's descendant, known in his- 
tory as William the Conqueror, who one hundred 
and fifty years later conquered England, and intro- 
duced there Norman customs and language and 
literature. Feudalism and chivalry, the two great 
institutions of the Middle Ages, come to us in 
Norman guise. 

Rollo died an old, old man, and was buried in the 
church of Rouen ; and with him ends the last great 
barbarian invasion from the North. The North, the 
"forge of mankind," as an old Roman writer had 
called it, had sent one Teutonic people after another 
down on the gentler Southland, and with the min- 
gling of the races the tale of the wandering of the 
nations in Europe is complete. 



SAINT WINFRED 

THERE were all kinds of people in the early 
Middle Ages, and the ones of whom we hear 
the most are the warriors and kings and emperors 
and scholars. But there was another group of men 
without whom Roman and barbarian Europe would 
never have been transformed into Christendom. 
They were the preachers and teachers and mission- 
aries of the Christian Church, whom the people of 
the Middle Ages called saints. They did not speak 
of themselves that way ; no real saint ever thought 
himself such. But they lived to serve the Church 
and to fight heathendom and wickedness, and when 
they were gone the people who had known them 
best, recalling the beauty of their lives and the re- 
markable amount of good they had done, would 
say, " He was a saint "; and sometimes, if his place 
in the world had been very important, the Church 
would write his name in its catalogue of saints. 

Such a one was Winfred of England, who was the 
great apostle to the Germans ; though if you looked 
for his name in the annals of the Church, you would 
151 



152 BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 

be more likely to find him described as Saint Boniface 
than Saint Winfred, for Boniface was his church 
name. But Winfred was his boyhood name and his 
Anglo-Saxon name, by which we like to call him, for 
it reminds us that he was of our own blood. 

In Winfred's time parents chose for their boys, 
while they were yet children, whether they should be 
soldiers or landholders or churchmen and scholars. 
When Winfred was seven years old his father and 
mother decided that because he was so bright and 
quick, and so thoughtful too, he must be given to the 
Church. So little Winfred went to live^ in an Anglo- 
Saxon monastery, — just such a one as Alcuin left 
a century later to go over and teach Charlemagne's 
School of the Palace, for we have turned back in our 
history to a time before the days of Charlemagne or 
Alfred, to the year 680, when this "Apostle to the 
Germans " was born. 

In the monastery Winfred learned many wonder- 
ful things. He found that the Anglo-Saxons had 
not always been Christians, nor had they always 
dwelt in England. His own forefathers had come 
over in wooden boats from Friesland, which was in 
the northern part of Europe, and they had been 
heathen barbarians. It was not two hundred years 
since they landed, and it was just ninety years since 



ANGLES OR ANGELS? 153 

St. Augustine had sailed over from Europe to bring 
Christianity to Britain. 

Two stories Winfred liked best of all those which 
the monks told him, and they were the two which 
were to decide his afterlife. The first was of some 
British boys with fair hair and blue eyes like his own, 
who had been stolen away by pirates and taken to 
Rome, where all were of southern birth and had dark 
eyes and black hair. They were offered for sale in the 
slave market, and as they stood there, Pope Gregory, 
the head of the Christian Church, who happened 
to be passing by had seen them and was struck 
by their appearance. "Who are they?" he had 
asked. "They are called Angles," their master re- 
plied. "Angels should they be called rather, for 
the fairness of their faces, if only their hearts were 
made pure by the true faith," the Pope had replied ; 
and from the desire that came into his heart at the 
sight of these fair northern lads resulted Augustine's 
journey and the conversion of Britain to Chris- 
tianity. 

When this tale was finished Winfred would beg 
for his other favorite, the story of his Saxon fore- 
fathers : how they had been called by the Britons to 
come over and help to defeat the Picts and Scots ; 
how they had left their wild country of Friesland, 



154 BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 

where they worshiped strange gods who dwelt in 
trees and rocks, and whom they thought to appease 
by offering sacrifices and wearing charms and repeat- 
ing weird songs and spells ; and how they had come 
over as warriors and remained to dwell in the land of 
Britain, and had been delivered from the religion of 
fear and cruelty. 

" You should thank God daily, Winfred, that you 
are delivered from such heathendom," the old father 
would end his tale. 

" Are the people who stayed in Friesland heathens 
now ? " Winfred asked once. 

"Alas, yes, my son. Though our good brother 
Benedict labors among them, they are still, he writes 
me, held in the bondage of fear." 

Winfred made no reply, but at that hour he made 
up his mind that when he was .a man he would go to 
preach Christianity to these barbarians of his own 
race and blood. 

Places of high honor in the churches and schools 
were open to Winfred when he came to manhood, 
but he set his face steadfastly toward Friesland and 
the work of his boyhood purpose. But it was not to 
be as he had planned. As the eager young monk 
was entering the wild region of the Frisians, he was 
met by missionaries of his own faith, who were being 




WINFRED AT THOR'S OAK 



55 



156 BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 

forced by the heathen to depart with all their goods. 
The Frisians were at war, and no foreigner was 
allowed to remain within their borders. 

It was not Winf red's way to turn back or remain 
idle. Seeing that his chosen work must be delayed 
for a time, he turned southward into Germany, and 
there he found German Saxons who were even as 
the Frisian forefathers of his boyhood tales. Every 
tree and stone, every hill and valley, were to them 
the dwelling places of angry spirits to whom sacrifice 
must be offered lest they sally forth and punish them. 
Goats and sheep and even human beings must be 
offered to appease these gods, and many signs and 
charms must be constantly practiced. It was a cruel 
religion, and the people listened with longing to 
Winf red's words about a kind and loving God who 
ruled the world. Sometimes they were almost per- 
suaded to believe, but when night fell and the wind 
whistled in the forests and the rain and thunder 
came, they would slip away to the heathen altars and 
pray to the gods for forgiveness. " Your God is very 
beautiful and kindly," they would say to Winf red, 
"but he is not so strong as Woden or Thor." 

Then Winf red saw that preaching was not enough. 
He let it be known that on a certain day he intended 
to cut down the Great Oak, the sacred tree of Thor, 



"THE APOSTLE TO THE GERMANS" 157 

where the people had worshiped and sacrificed for 
generations, and which they feared almost as if it 
were the god Thor himself. An angry crowd was 
gathered about the sacred grove when Winfred ap- 
peared with his ax, but he walked calmly through 
their midst. The people expected to see him fall 
dead the moment he stepped within the holy circle, 
which no heathen priest dared enter. But they 
looked again, and there he stood, calmly hacking 
away at the holy oak. Then a thunderstorm arose, 
and the Saxons trembled with fear, thinking that 
their gods were speaking out their wrath in the 
crashes and reverberations of the thunder. But mar- 
vel of marvels ! the lightning struck not Winfred, 
the impious blasphemer, but the oak itself. With 
one flash it completed Winfred's work, splitting the 
great tree into three fragments and bearing it to 
earth. Then the people shouted with one accord 
that Winfred's God was stronger than their gods, 
and that they would serve him henceforth. 

Winfred made an oath which every one must take 
before he could become a Christian, which would 
show truly that he had put away the old religion of 
fear and superstition. This is the way it read : " I 
forsake the devil and all his family and all his works 
and words, Thor and Woden and Saxnote, and all 



158 BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 

those who are his companions." No little imp of dark- 
ness could slip in to trouble the believer after that ! 

Thirty years Winfred labored in Germany, and 
when he was an old man he could look out on a 
broad land dotted with Christian churches and schools 
and monasteries which he and his helpers had founded. 
But his heart was not satisfied. Far to the north lay 
the heathen land of Friesland where the gospel was 
not yet known. "At last," he said, "the time has 
come when I may leave this work and go to Fries- 
land." With a few faithful followers he went away, 
when he was seventy years old, into this wild, bar- 
barian land, and there he labored for five years, and 
many thousands believed and praised God that he 
had come. When the number of believers was so 
great that churches must be formed, he summoned 
them to come together on a June day in 755 and be 
received into the Christian Church. But as he and 
his followers were preparing for the service a great 
number of armed heathen appeared, and of all Win- 
fred's company of fifty-two not one escaped death 
at the hands of these savage barbarians. So Winfred 
died in Friesland, giving his life when he was an old 
man to carry out the dream of his boyhood. 



RICHARD THE CRUSADER 

THE story of the struggle between races and 
peoples in the early Middle Ages is almost 
finished. Only one chapter remains, and if we look 
back over the stories, we get here and there a hint of 
what this last contest is to be. There have been two 
kinds of conflict in these centuries, — the strife be- 
tween North and South, and the strife between East 
and West. The North and South have come together 
and fought their battles, and then settled down to 
live side by side in the provinces of Europe, until at 
last there is no North nor South, but a united Chris- 
tendom. But the East and West have met and fought 
and separated. The Huns came over from Asia and 
tried to conquer Europe but failed ; the Moslem 
peoples came in by way of Spain but were driven back. 
Whenever armies from the East entered Europe all 
the western peoples united against them ; for they 
came to see that the differences between themselves 
were slight, while between them and the men from 
the East there lay a great gulf of manner and speech 
and thought and religion, — a gulf so wide that 
there could be no union. 
i59 



160 BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 

Thus far in our story the East has come over each 
time and invaded the West. Now in the eleventh 
and twelfth centuries Christendom sends her armies 
into the East in an attempt to win back from the 
Moslems Palestine, the Holy Land of the Christian 
faith ; and it is with one picture from this long 
period of the Crusades that our story will close. 

Richard of England took part in the third of these 
Crusades. There was never a king who loved war- 
fare and adventure more than this tall Englishman, 
"with hair halfway between red and yellow," "with 
arms somewhat long, and, for this very reason, better 
fitted than those of most folk to draw or wield the 
sword," and " with long legs, matching the character 
of his whole frame." It is no mere chance that 
in the ten years during which he was king of the 
English people he spent barely six months on the 
island which he ruled. The blood of Viking wander- 
ers and Saxon warriors flowed swift in his veins and 
drove him forth from the narrow limits of his realm. 

Just before Richard was made king the news 
came to Christendom that Jerusalem, which had 
been ruled by Christian kings since the days of the 
First Crusade, had fallen into the hands of a new 
and powerful Moslem prince named Saladin. On the 
day of his coronation Richard made preparations to 




i6i 



1 62 BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 

set out as soon as possible with his brother in arms, 
Philip, the king of France, to rescue the Holy City. 

Philip and his army went round to Asia by the 
land route, across Europe and down through the 
provinces which form modern Turkey, while Richard 
and his fleet embarked from Spain and Italy and 
sailed the whole length of the Mediterranean. Here 
is the picture an Arabic writer drew of the coming 
of Richard and his huge fleet to one of the ports of 
Sicily. " As soon as the people heard of his arrival, 
they rushed in crowds to the shore to behold the 
glorious king of England, and at a distance saw 
the sea covered with innumerable galleys : and the 
sounds of trumpets from afar, with the sharper and 
shriller blasts of clarions, resounded in their ears : 
and they beheld the galleys rowing in order nearer 
to the land, adorned and furnished with all manner 
of arms, countless pennons floating in the wind, en- 
signs at the end of the lances, the beaks of the gal- 
leys distinguished by various paintings, and glittering 
shields suspended to the prows. The sea appeared 
to boil with the multitude of the rowers ; the clangor 
of the trumpets was deafening." 

Philip had already reached Palestine and was besieg- 
ing Acre, the strongest Moslem fortress. As Rich- 
ard and his fleet were preparing to leave Sicily, 



THE ARRIVAL IN THE HOLY LAND 163 

" lo ! there now went abroad a report that Acre was 
on the point of being taken : upon hearing which 
the king with a deep sigh prayed God that the city 
might not fall before his arrival. Then with great 
haste he went on board one of the best and largest 
of his galleys : and being impatient of delay, as he 
always was, he kept right on ahead. And so, as they 
were furrowing the sea with all haste, they caught 
their earliest glimpse of that Holy Land of Jerusalem." 

Acre had not fallen when Richard arrived. But 
within a month the Turks were forced to surrender 
the stronghold. Then the hopes of the Crusaders 
ran high, and they dreamed that with Richard as 
their leader they could soon conquer the whole land. 
But King Philip had grown weary in this month of 
hearing the praises of the English king sung by 
every soldier of the army, and in spite of the protests 
of Richard he declared that he was weary of the war 
and sailed away home with a large part of his army. 

The story of this war between Christian and Mos- 
lem is too long to tell here. For a year and a half 
the Crusaders fought in Palestine, but though they 
won many victories they were too few to conquer the 
land. In every battle King Richard's bravery won 
him new honor, till his feats were the talk of both 
armies. Not only did his own men call him Richard 



1 64 BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 

the Lion- Hearted, but his name was so feared among 
the Turks that it became a byword with them. A 
hundred years later an Arab rider would exclaim to 
his horse when it started in the way and pricked up 
its ears, "What! dost think King Richard is in 
front of thee ? " and Arab mothers would frighten 
their children into silence by whispering, " Hush, 
King Richard is coming." 

Richard was twice very ill with fever during these 
months, and at last, having made terms with Saladin, 
by which the Christians were to have many rights in 
the Holy City, he decided to sail away to England, 
where he was much needed. But as he was on the 
point of embarking, envoys came to say that Jaffa 
had been taken by Saladin. They stood before the 
king in rent garments, beseeching him to come to 
the aid of the city, and he broke short their words in 
the middle of their pleading, saying, " God yet lives 
and with his guidance I will set out to do what I can." 

So the remnant of the army set sail for Jaffa, and 
11 a favorable wind blew up from behind and brought' 
the fleet smoothly and safely to the port of Jaffa in 
the deep gloom of Friday night. Meanwhile, when the 
Turks learned that the king's galleys and ships were 
putting into shore, they rushed down to the beach 
in bands. They did not wait for the newcomers 



RICHARD THE DELIVERER 165 

to reach land, but flung their missiles into the sea 
against the ships ; while their horsemen advanced 
as far as they could into the water for the purpose 
of shooting their arrows with greater effect. Mean- 
while the king, who had been scanning all things 
with a curious eye, caught sight of a certain priest, 
who was throwing himself from the land into the 
sea in order that he might swim up. This man, 
when taken on board the galley, with panting breath 
and beating heart spake as follows : ' O noble king, 
those who still survive are longing for thy arrival. 
Assuredly they will perish at once unless, by thy 
means, divine aid reaches them.' On hearing this 
the king said, ' Then, even though it please God, on 
whose service and under whose guidance we have 
come to this land, that we should die here with our 
brethren, let him perish who will not go forward.' 
Then the king's galleys were thrust on toward the 
shore and the king himself, though his legs were un- 
armed, plunged up to his middle into the sea, and so, 
by vigorous efforts, gained the dry land ; and all the 
others followed, leaping into the sea, and they boldly 
set upon the Turks who were lining the beach, and 
carried on the pursuit till the whole shore was cleared. 
The king was the first to enter the town, and imme- 
diately he had his banners displayed on the highest 



1 66 BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 

part of the walls, so that the besieged Christians in 
the tower might see them. They, on seeing it, took 
heart, and snatching up their arms, came down from 
the tower to meet their deliverer." 

So Jaffa was saved, and King Richard pitched his 
tents once more on the soil of Palestine. But here 
again a sore sickness came upon him, and since none 
of the princes of the army would stay and guard the 
land without him, he sent messengers once more to 
Saladin to make terms for a truce. When the mes- 
sengers returned, they brought the draft of a treaty 
by which Jerusalem was to be open to all pilgrims 
for the space of three years and three months and 
three days and three hours. They placed the paper 
in Richard's hands and told him what was in it (for 
he was very ill), and he answered, " I have no strength 
to read it, but here is my hand on the peace." 

In October Richard sailed away from Palestine. 
Before he went he sent word to Saladin, his chivalrous 
adversary, for whom he had a great admiration, and 
who had shown him during his illness many kind- 
nesses though they were enemies at war, that when 
the three years' truce was over he would come again 
to rescue Jerusalem ; and Saladin said in answer 
that if he must lose his land he would rather lose it 
to Richard than to any man alive. 



RICHARD'S FAREWELL TO THE HOLYLAND 



167 



1 68 BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 

It was late in the afternoon when Richard's fleet 
set sail from the Holy Land, and as the vessels 
weighed anchor all the people wept and lamented, 
crying, " O Jerusalem, who will protect thee if the 
truce is broken, now that thou art reft of such a 
champion." And the king, " looking back with pious 
eyes upon the land behind him, after long meditation, 
broke out into prayer : ' O Holy Land, to God do I 
intrust thee. May he, of his mercy, only grant me 
such space of life that, by his good will, I may bring 
thee aid. For it is my hope and intention to aid thee 
in some future time.' And with this prayer he urged 
his sailors to display full sail so that they might 
make a speedier course." 

Richard never returned to the Holy Land, and 
though other kings led Crusades during the next 
hundred years, Christendom never enlarged her do- 
main to include Palestine. But though they failed to 
extend the bounds of Christendom, these Crusades 
served to strengthen the bonds by which, after the bar- 
barian invasions, Europe was gradually united. They 
are the sign that out of the Roman Empire and the 
barbarian kingdoms had come forth Christendom. 



NOTES 

THE MEDIAEVAL WORLD 




m 

i .- r-\ 

OUTLINE 
i?/ centuries 

The wandering of the peoples 

i st period (Goths and Huns) . . . 5th century 
2d period (Danes and Norsemen) . . 8th and 9th centuries 
The attempts for a united Europe 

Theodoric's kingdom 5th and 6th centuries 

Charlemagne's empire 8th and 9th centuries 

The Saracen invasions 8th, 9th, and 10th 

centuries 

The Crusades nth, 12th, and 13th 

centuries 
169 




170 BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 

By dates 

The expedition of Drusus 9 b.c. 

The sack of Rome 410 a.d. 

The battle of Chalons 451 

Theodoric's reign in Italy 493-525 

The baptism of Clovis 496 

The battle of Guadelete 711 

The coronation of Charlemagne 800 

Ragnar before Paris 845 

Alfred's treaty with the Danes 878 

Charles's treaty with Rollo 912 

Richard's Crusade 1190-119: 



SOURCES 

To give even a partial list of the sources of this book would 
be to recite a succession of names of chronicles and of histo- 
rians, with most of which the teacher would probably be un- 
familiar. The repetition would serve no practical purpose save 
to give the volume an air of scholarship and erudition. Edward 
Freeman, the great English historian, has voiced the experience 
of all students of the early Middle Ages when he says : " The 
history of these years has to be made out by piecing together a 
great number of authorities, none of which are of first-rate merit. 
We have an unusual wealth of accounts, such as they are, written 
by men who lived at the time ; but there is none who claims high 
place as a narrator, still less is there any who could understand 
the full significance of his own days. Nor is there any who gave 
himself specially to remark and to record that particular chain 
of events with which we are specially concerned. All is frag- 
mentary ; one fact has to be found here and another there." 

Yet the reader of to-day need not enter this vast and some- 
what unexplored field of history without a guide. The reason 
why we turn to the history of the Middle Ages is not that the 



NOTES 171 

children may glean a few facts or learn a few names with an 
episode attached to each. It is because there is a continuity in 
this record of events, because these men were, all unconsciously 
to themselves, laying the foundations of the modern world. That 
the chroniclers of those early days were graphic in their stories 
and that the men and the times were picturesque and interesting 
is our good fortune. That is why children enjoy the stories. 
They will enjoy them all the more and remember them the 
longer if they see in the heroes not merely " famous men " but 
builders of the world of to-day. Great historians have within the 
last century interpreted the Middle Ages in the light of modern 
thought. They have seen in the succession of events an epic of 
civilization. Kings and warriors have been to them actors in a 
great world drama. It is these men who must be our guides. 
They wrote essays and histories for older people ; the author 
has tried to put their spirit into stories for children. To the 
thoughtful child the purpose of the tales will be plain ; but it 
would have spoiled the artistic story-side of the book to have 
the joints of the framework too visible. The following quota- 
tions and notes are given with the purpose of taking the teacher 
and older reader a little further into the author's plan, and in 
the hope that thereby the work may be made more simple and 
more rewarding. 



THE STORY OF DRUSUS 

The two mighty streams that protected the provinces of Europe. 

Gibbon 

In the drama of Europe the Rhine-Danube river line claims a 
place as one of the chief factors. Men and nations come and go ; 
but pick up the story where we will, there are civilized peoples 
on one side of the line, barbarians on the other. Call the child's 
attention to this, and let him watch for the rivers in every story, 
till at the end he can trace them on the map and give some such 
outline as this. 



172 BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 

I. Boundary between the Roman Empire and the Barbarian. 

1. Frontier fortified by the Romans (p. 2). 

2. Romans try to cross over and fail (pp. 4-9). 

3. Neutral meeting place (pp. 10-17). 

4. The barbarian Goth crosses over to escape the more 

barbarian Hun (pp. 22, 23). 

5. Alaric crosses back to be made king (p. 27). 

6. Romans cross to beg the barbarian Attila not to enter 

the Empire (pp. 43-46). 

7. Attila retires beyond the river in defeat (p. 52). 

II. Boundary between Christendom and the Barbarian. 

1. Clovis establishes it (pp. 85-91). 

2. Charlemagne restores it (p. 107). 

3. The Church sends Winfred across it to convert the 

barbarian tribes (pp. 151-15S). 



A ROMAN AND A BARBARIAN 

There is one sentiment, one in particular, which it is necessary 
to understand before we can form a true picture of a barbarian : it 
is the pleasure of personal independence, — the pleasure of enjoying, 
in full force and liberty, all his powers in the various ups and 
downs of fortune ; the fondness for activity zvithotit labor ; for a 
life of enterprise and adventure. Such was the prevailing character 
and disposition of the barbarians ; such were the moral wants 
which put these immense masses of men into motion. . . . It was 
the rude barbarians of Germany who introduced this sentiment of 
personal independence, this love of individual liberty, into European 
civilization. — GuiZOT 

In discussing Athanaric and the other Gothic heroes we should 
keep it constantly in mind that our interest in the barbarian is 
in him as an actor in the drama of civilization, as a builder of the 
modern world. We do not ignore his cruelties or vices ; neither 
do we dwell on them. The Teuton fulfilled the definition of a 
barbarian by being " a man in a rude, savage, and uncivilized 



NOTES 173 

state." He was a true barbarian, but he was something more; 
else Kingsley's word would not have been spoken that "the 
hope and not the despair of the world lay in the Teuton." It 
was true, as Myers has said, that the Teutons " had neither arts, 
nor sciences, nor philosophies, nor literatures. But they had 
something better than all these things : they had personal worth. 
It was because of this, because of their free, independent spirit, 
of their unbounded capacity for growth, for culture, for accom- 
plishment, that the future time became theirs." 



THE COMING OF THE WITCH PEOPLE 

Against the e7npire of the Ostrogoths the endless Asiatic horde 
moved on. — Hodgkin 

Here the distinction may be made between the two kinds of 
barbarian : the Teuton, " who had in him the power of rising to 
the highest level " ; and the Hun, who is classed with " dull bar- 
barians, mighty in destruction, powerless in construction, essen- 
tially and incurably barbarous." Bring out for the children the 
contrast between the two : " the fair-haired, fair-skinned, long- 
bearded, and majestic Goth on the one side ; the little, swarthy, 
smooth-faced Tartar Hun on the other; here the shepherd 
merging into the agriculturist, there the mere hunter ; here the 
barbarian standing on the threshold of civilization, there the 
irreclaimable savage." 

The Huns are supposed to have originated in central China, 
and to have come into Europe by way of the Sea of Aral and 
the region north of the Caspian Sea. Let the child trace the 
long path of the migration on the map in his geography. 

It has been well said that " the exclamation of the Goth 
Athanaric, when led into the market place of Constantinople, 
may stand for the feelings of his nation : ' The emperor is with- 
out doubt a god upon earth, and he who lifts a hand against 
him is guilty of his own blood.' " 



174 BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 



ALARIC THE GOTH 

So, under the health-bringing waters of the rapid Busento, sleeps 
Alareiks the Visigoth, equalled, may it not be said, by only three 
men in succeeding times as a changer of the course of history. And 
these three are Mohammed, Columbus, Napoleon. — Hodgkin 

There is a story that as Alaric was making his march down 
from the Alps into Italy a monk came to him in his royal tent 
and warned him to refrain from slaughter and bloodshed such as 
would attend an invasion of the land. " I am impelled to this 
course in spite of myself," replied Alaric ; " for something 
within urges me every day irresistibly onwards, saying, ' Proceed 
to Rome and make that city desolate.' " Such is the feeling of 
destiny with which ancient historians record the calamity. 

The importance of the sack of Rome is immeasurably greater 
than its three days' occupation would suggest. As Freeman has 
said, Rome had so thoroughly spread herself over the whole of 
her world that " her actual capture and sack was a solemn and 
terror-striking incident ; it was a sign that an old day was passing 
away and that a new day was coming ; it was a thing to be re- 
membered in later days as no other event of those times was 
likely to be remembered ; but at the moment it made little prac- 
tical difference to any but those who immediately suffered by it. 
What really changed the face of Western Europe was not that 
Rome was taken but that Rome was threatened. It was the 
presence of Alaric in Italy, a presence of which the taking of 
Rome was as it were the formal witness, which opened the way 
for the separation of the Western lands from the Empire and 
for the beginning of the powers of the modern world." 

The ransom demanded by the barbarians is particularly inter- 
esting, — gold and silver, the Nibelung treasure, as Kingsley 
has said ; silken tunics, and hides dyed in scarlet ; and three 
thousand pounds of pepper, which was an expensive luxury 
brought from India, and which suggests that the appetites of 
these northerners had become capricious in the southern lands. 



NOTES 175 



ATTILA THE SCOURGE OF GOD 

The amotcnt of abject, slavish fear which the little swarthy Kal- 
muck succeeded in instilling into millions of human hearts is not 
to be easily matched in the history of our race. ... The impression 
left upon us by what history records of him is that of a gigantic 
bully. — Hodgkin 

It is easy to make so many events turning points in the world's 
history that the words lose their meaning; but no one can over- 
estimate the importance of these battles when the Huns were 
defeated and driven out of central Europe. The invasions of the 
Goths retarded civilization, but when the " tumult and the shout- 
ing die " we find the Goth perpetuating the Roman law and the 
Christian faith, "endeavoring everywhere to identify himself 
with the system he overthrew. For it is hardly too much to say," 
continues Bryce, " that the thought of antagonism to the Empire 
and the wish to extinguish it never crossed the mind of the bar- 
barians [Teutons]." The Huns came with no purpose or ambition 
but to destroy. 

Attila has often been compared to Napoleon, our latest world 
conqueror, and the passage in which Hodgkin, having spoken of 
their many unlikenesses, sums up their likenesses is so suggestive 
as to be worth quoting. w Like Attila, Napoleon destroyed far 
more than he could rebuild : his empire, like Attila's, lasted less 
than two decades of years ; but, unlike Attila, ... he outlived his 
own prosperity. . . . The insatiable pride, the arrogance which 
beat down the holders of ancient thrones and trampled them like 
dust beneath their feet, the wide-stretching schemes of empire, 
the haste which forbade their conquests to endure, . . . , and, 
above all, the terror which the mere sound of their names brought 
to fair cities and widely scattered races of men, — in all these 
points no one so well as Napoleon explains to us the character 
and career of Attila." 



176 BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 

THEODORIC 

A r o mart's history better shows the strange relations between the 
Teutons and the dying Empire. — Kingsley 

It has been suggested that in this old Gothic custom that each 
young warrior must perform some exploit before he is recognized 
by the tribe, may be found the origin of the similar requirement 
of chivalry for knighthood. 

GOTH AGAINST GOTH 

The failing Emperor's bought off the Teutons where they could; 
submitted to them where they could not ; and readily enough turned 
on them when they had a chance. — Kingsley 

One picture of the difficulties of the barbarian life, and one 
chronicle of the migration of a nation it has seemed worth while 
to give, lest in our stories the impression be made on the child 
of an easy and inevitable flow of events, and of swift successes 
and changes. We talk glibly of " The Wandering of the Peo- 
ples " ; but for a nation to move a thousand miles is for them, and 
for the lands through which the journey is made, a convulsion 
like an earthquake prolonged for days and weeks and months. 

In connection with the conditions which must accompany such 
a migration, Freeman has given us a wise caution. " The rough 
dealings," he says, M of a barbarian invader with men and things 
in the invaded land have nothing in common with the prolonged 
and carefully studied cruelties of a Visconti. . . . Ravage, plun- 
der, even slaughter, done among the whirl of feelings which must 
accompany the armed entry into a strange land, are really not 
inconsistent with much true kindliness of heart lurking below." 

CLOVIS, KING OF THE FRANKS 

The mere warrior and conqueror halts at the bidding of one who, 
warrior and conqueror no less than himself is also the ruler, the 
lawgiver, the Judge between contending men and nations. 

Freeman 



NOTES 177 

Historians are one in their estimate of the importance of 
Theodoric's position and work, and in our story he is a striking 
illustration of the transition from barbarian to noble which took 
place with all the barbarian nations except the Huns and the 
Saracens. 

" The first real attempt," writes one historian, " to blend the 
peoples and maintain the traditions of Roman wisdom in the 
hands of a new and vigorous race was reserved for a more famous 
chieftain, the greatest of all the barbarian conquerors, the fore- 
runner of the first barbarian Emperor, Theodoric the Ostrogoth." 
" No prince in history," writes another, " ever held a position of 
greater dignity, or used it with greater moderation." That his 
union of nations died with him is a sad testimony to his greatness. 
" Because he had- done for a generation what no other man could 
do, his work was to pass away with his generation." 

The greatness of Theodoric should not, however, overshadow 
the importance of Clovis, the founder of the Prankish kingdom. 
It was through the change, which in his life is so picturesque, 
from barbarian to Christian that Europe was to be transformed 
and to appear before many centuries " in the higher garb of 
Christendom." 

RODERICK AND THE SARACENS 

Of strange tradition many a mystic trace, 
Legend and vision, prophecy and sign ; 
Where wonders wild of A?-abesqtte combine 
With Gothic imagery of darker shade. 

Sir Walter Scott 

So Scott characterizes this legendary history of Spain at the 
opening of his poem based on this story, which has been also 
used by Southey as the subject of a poem. The frequent use of 
this incident as the theme of poets " does not," says Coppee, 
" seem to me due solely to its interest as a story : it has a mean- 
ing, and an important one ; and thus we accept these legends as 
containing valuable contributions to the true history." 



178 BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 



CHARLEMAGNE 

That imperial figure which, like some magnificent colossus, fiings 
its shadow athwart the boundary that divides the ancient from the 
modern era. — Mullinger 

In whatever point of view, indeed, we regard the reign of Charle- 
magne, zve always find its leading characteristic to be a desire to 
overcome barbarism, and to advance civilization. — Guizot 

Up to this point the characters dealt with in this volume have 
been men whose modern interest was from a single point of view, 
— the conflict between barbarian and noble and the transition from 
barbarian to noble. Charlemagne is the first of a large number 
of many-sided heroes, whose greatness lay in the share they had 
in all the movements of their time. The treatment of Charle- 
magne calls attention to the method of the series, already stated, 
of grouping characters and events about different phases of the 
progress of civilization rather than giving full biographies. Char- 
lemagne is an admirable example of the advantages of this 
method. To give a continuous biography of the " central figure 
of the Middle Ages " is no easy or satisfactory matter. We may 
select certain parts of his life, but we must be constantly digress- 
ing to explain why this or that item or anecdote is important. 
If we try to tell most of the stories about him, we must present 
a curious jumble of his boyhood, his fondness for hunting, his 
success as a warrior in whose wake flowed rivers of blood, his 
coronation following immediately upon these victories, his pat- 
ronage of arts and learning, and in the next breath his Bluebeard 
list of wives. Moreover, there is the Charlemagne of chivalry 
and romance clamoring for a place in the story. 

It is our belief that the child will get a more just and more 
attractive impression of Charlemagne by coming upon him 
several times in the course of the story of the Middle Ages. 
Certainly he could not be better introduced than as the noble 
overcoming the barbarian. The child is now ready to appreciate 
his place in history, "repeating the attempt of Theodoric to 



NOTES 1 79 

breathe a Teutonic spirit into Roman forms," and bringing about 
"the union, so long in preparation, so mighty in its consequences, 
of the Roman and the Teuton, of the memories and the civiliza- 
tion of the South with the fresh energy of the North." " And 
from that moment," says Bryce, " modern history begins." Re- 
call to the child at this point that it is nearly four hundred years 
since the first Teuton conquered Rome, but that Charlemagne is 
the first to receive the title of Emperor. 

Yet Charlemagne's political empire fell to pieces at his death, 
and in the reason for its breaking up we come upon another 
aspect of Charlemagne's position. A new spirit, which was to 
triumph in Europe, was beginning to make itself felt, — the spirit 
of nationality ; and in another book of the series, " Patriots and 
Tyrants," we see Charlemagne as the representative of the theory 
of empire standing over against Wittekind, the hero of national 
liberty. Again, the emperor's huge jeweled crown is one of the 
triumphs of the Renaissance art of which the story is told in 
" Craftsman and Artist." And so we find him in this series, as in 
the chronicles of history, appearing at every turn. The Charle- 
magne of chivalry and romance belongs to literature rather than 
history, and will be found in the author's companion series, 
The Open Road Library. 

Read in connection with the "man of iron" picture Longfellow's 
version of the same incident in The Poet's Tale: Charlemagne of 
" Tales of a Wayside Inn." 



THE SCHOOL OF THE PALACE 

The histoiy of the schools of Charles the Great has modified the 
whole stibsequent history of European culture. — Mullinger 

Four great influences played the leading parts in the transfor- 
mation of the barbarian peoples, — chivalry, feudalism, the school, 
the Church. A story has been found for the beginnings of each. 

In The Student's Tale: Emma and Eginhard, Longfellow 
gives a charming picture of the time : 



I So BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 

" When Alcuin taught the sons of Charlemagne, 
In the free schools of Aix, how kings should reign, 
And with them taught the children of the poor 
How subjects should be patient and endure, 



In sooth, it was a pleasant sight to see 
That Saxon monk, with hood and rosary, 
With inkhorn at his belt, and pen and book, 
And mingled love and reverence in his look, 
Or hear the cloister and the court repeat 
The measured footfalls of his sandaled feet, 
Or watch him with the pupils of his school, 
Gentle of speech, but absolute of rule." 

VIKINGS FROM THE NORTH 

" Now give us men from the sunless plain" 
Cried the South to the A r orlh, 
" By need of work in the snow and rain 
Made strong, and brave by familiar pain /" 
Cried the South to the North. 

The relations between men from the north and dwellers in the 
south is a fascinating starting point for a study of history. It is 
hard at first to see any advantage which was to come from that 
second outbreak of the Wandering of the Peoples, when " the 
torrent of barbarism which Charles the Great had stemmed was 
rushing down upon his empire." But out of the blending of 
these peoples were to come the strong nations of the modern 
world. 

Of this incident of the Northmen before Paris, Keary has 
said with truth that " a volume could not better express than 
this one fact " the conditions of the time, — the ignorance of the 
invaders of the world into which they were forcing their way, 
and the mystery with which they were enshrouded by the super- 
stitions of Europe about the north. This tale may be used also 



NOTES iSl 

as a perfect illustration of the way history and legend grow up 
together. The simple fact of an attack, and a retreat in the fog 
is the historic material. Jn Norse legend the city with its vapor- 
ous mist becomes a part of the lower world ; in Paris the story 
becomes a monkish legend of miracle. 

ALFRED AND THE DANES 

Alfred is the most perfect character in history. . . . A saint 
without superstition, a scholar without ostentation, a -warrior all 
whose wars were fought in the defense of his country, a conqueror 
whose laurels were never stained by cruelty^ a prince never cast 
down by adversity, never lifted up to insolence in the hour of 
triumph — there is no other name in history to compare with his. 

Freeman 

It is always a delight to come upon Alfred in our reading of 
history, and we shall come upon him many times again. Here 
he is rendering England an immeasurable service in fighting 
and then civilizing the barbarian Danes. His distinction as the 
founder of England's navy gives him a place in " Sea Kings and 
Explorers"; his patronage of the arts gains him "honorable 
mention " in " Craftsman and Artist " ; and no English-speaking 
readers would be satisfied without seeing him also in his private 
life as " England's Darling " in " Kings and Common Folk." 

ROLLO THE VIKING 

A young Viking, Rolf, . . . 7uas destined . . . to create the only 
permanent northern state within the limits of the ancient Carlo- 
vingian Empire. — Keary 

The story of Rollo tells itself. It should only be noticed that 
in the ceremony which made him a vassal of the king, and in 
his distribution of land among his men, we have the signs of the 
feudalism which established property rights and organized men 
and tribes in a settled society which ended all nomadic life. 



1 82 BARBARIAN AND NOBLE 



SAINT WINFRED 

When at the fall of the western empire . . . she fottnd herself 
surrounded by barbarian kings, by barbarian chieftains wandering 
from place to place, or shut up in their castles, zuith zvhom she had 
nothing in common, between whom and her there zvas as yet no tie : 
. . . only one idea became predominant in the Church : it was to 
take possession of these newcomers — to convert them. — Guizot 

In our earlier stories the spread of Christianity has seemed a 
political matter, accomplished by war. Personal missionary work 
always followed and sometimes preceded the national change 
from heathendom, " and the work that Winfred did, unlike that 
of Charlemagne, has never been undone, but, ever fresh and 
vigorous, bears fruit more and more abundantly." 



RICHARD THE CRUSADER 

Honor enough his merit brings, 

He needs no alien praise 
In whose train, Glory, like a king's, 

Follows through all his days. 

Itinerarium Regis Ricardi 

The story of the struggle between barbarian and noble on 
European soil is finished ; the outline map of Europe is fairly 
well defined, though no permanent lines of division can be 
drawn within her borders. But in the Crusades we have an 
epilogue. The barbarian no longer invades Europe, but a war- 
like Christendom, stimulated by the Church and organized by 
the institution of chivalry, seeks out the former invaders — the 
barbaric races of Arab, Moor, and Turk — in their homes, and 
wages with them a struggle of three centuries. With Richard 
the Crusader our drama closes. We do not even wait to see 
him imprisoned on his way home and rescued by Blondel ; that 
tale belongs in " Cavalier and Courtier." 



NOTES 183 



CONCLUSION 

Sum it up before you leave it and see what a drama it is : 
Roman generals halted at the doors of barbarian Germany; 
Alaric and his Goths coming down upon Rome ; Goths and 
Romans uniting to drive out the more barbarian hordes of the 
Huns ; Theodoric, the Gothic civilizer, receiving homage from 
that fierce barbarian, Clovis the Frank ; the barbaric Saracen 
defeating in Spain Roderick, the last king of the Goths, but 
falling back fifty years later before Charlemagne, the descendant 
of Clovis ; Alfred defending England from the Danes, and 
Charlemagne's kingdom threatened by Rollo the Viking; last, 
Rollo's descendant, Richard the Lion-Hearted, crusading beyond 
the bounds of Europe in behalf of Christendom. 

The foundations have been laid upon which every nation of 
modern Europe was to rise. If it seems that favorite heroes and 
familiar names have been omitted, the brief limits of sixteen 
stories and the opportunities of the remaining five volumes of 
the series must be the excuse. And if it seems that England's 
story has been underemphasized, the author would point once 
more to the later books, and repeat the words of Freeman in his 
lectures on " Western Europe in the Fifth Century " : " Every 
event that I have dwelled on in continental history, every pic- 
ture that I have striven to give of continental life, during this 
great period of the Wandering of the Nations, has been meant 
as an indirect contribution to the history of Britain and of the 
Teutonic conquerors of Britain." 



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